


Haunted

by Art3misPlayerOne



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Cute Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester Comfort, Dan Howell/Phil Lester Fluff, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Haunting, M/M, POV Dan Howell, POV Phil Lester, References to Depression, University Student Dan Howell, ghost story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 13:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 36,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13548720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Art3misPlayerOne/pseuds/Art3misPlayerOne
Summary: An unconventional Dan and Phil love story. <3





	1. Chapter 1

**Phil POV**

There is a measure of thrill that is only matched by a similar level of guilt that comes along with what I do. After you’re dead, all of the things that made you human in the first place fade away, and most emotions are just a pale shadow compared to what they were when you were living. Somehow, guilt is one that made it through the transition. It’s not the best feeling in the world, but at least it’s something.

But right now, I have to get past the guilt and focus my energy into dissecting all of the intimate details of a college student named Daniel Howell. I can tell my new subject is getting close without even looking. That’s one of the cool things about being dead I guess. Instead of having to see someone, you can sense their location. It’s the same with moods and speech, you sense everything instead of having to experience it firsthand. 

Spotting him, I amble in his direction and fall into step a reasonable distance behind him. I get that I’m invisible and he wouldn’t have a clue that I existed even if I were right next to him, but I guess I never got over my human respect for other people’s personal space. I frown as I mentally shuffle through all of the information I was given about him, which isn’t much. The only things are a physical description, some details about his family, and information about his first two years at college. Just as promised, he’s tall with a headful of neatly arranged brunette curls, slightly tanned skin, and a light sprinkling of freckles. His stride is quick, which is a good thing because according to my calculations he’s running late for his English Literature class. 

Following him into the English building, I’m taken aback and gawk at my surroundings. From the outside, the 150 yr old stone structure looks like it’s on the verge of collapse, but the inside has cavernous ceilings and marble covered floors. I’m jolted back to reality as a group of students pass right through my invisible form, causing me to shudder. I dodge around more people and slip into a classroom right after Dan, settling into an empty seat in the row behind him. 

As the professor starts lecturing, I contently relax into my chair. In my past life, I had an English degree so I’ve been looking forward to this part of his day. But as the minutes pass by, my fascination is drawn away from the lesson and back to Dan. Unlike myself, he hasn’t heard a word, and in fact, I’m having a hard time getting any sort of read on him at all. It almost feels like he’s emanating the white noise that static from a television provides.

Leaning forward to get closer, even though I technically don’t have to, I examine the notebook he’s writing in, but instead of lecture notes, there are intricate doodles and shapes. Eventually, the drawings turn into rows of sharp looking parallel lines before he puts down his pen and slouches down in his seat. I watch curiously to see what he’s going to do next, but to my surprise, he doesn’t move at all for the next 40 minutes. In fact, he doesn’t stir until the class is over and the student next to him accidentally kicks the desk and wakes him up. He quickly shoves his papers and book into his backpack and shuffles out of the room, leaving me sitting alone. 

Frowning, I restart my undertaking and tail him across campus again. He’s supposed to be headed to philosophy next, but he veers off the path and heads back to the dorms again, apparently opting to skip the class. I ride up in the elevator with him but instead of following him to his room, I find a spot in the 3rd-floor lounge two doors down. It’s close enough that I can tune in to whatever he’s doing. Relaxing on an old overstuffed couch, I let my eyes shut and concentrate on Dan.

Music fills my head again, but this time it’s a mixture of different bands and songs. I recognize them, yet I don’t quite remember them either. Just when I feel like I’m on the verge of recall, the next song starts and the process repeats itself. I used to love music. Before.

I clench my eyes shut and focus harder. He must be moving around. Looking for something maybe? I see fleeting glances of various parts of the room. There are clothes piled up on a desk chair and on the floor being tossed around and drawers filled with random objects that I can’t quite identify. Words are everywhere, posters on the walls with names of bands on them and stacks of books on the desk and next to the bed. He must be searching for a book because now he’s slowed down enough that I can read the titles. The music and books all feel so familiar and I wish I could figure out why. 

The view has changed again and this time it appears that he’s laying down on his bed. Is he falling asleep again? No. There’s a book. I get a brief glimpse of the cover before he begins flipping through it until he finds a scrap of paper tucked between the pages and starts to read: 

_Sometimes I wonder if it is too late to feel the same things that other people seem to be feeling. Sometimes I want to go up to people and say to them, "What is it you are feeling that I am not? Please, that's all I want to know."_

I know this! I know these words and this book. It’s a book of short stories, but I can’t remember how I have that information. A warm feeling washes over me and I let my focus wane. His eyes are running over the words line by line and it feels like he’s reading to me. I can feel his voice inside of me without ever having heard him speak before. 

I’m not sure how much time has passed, but when I snap out of it, his voice in my head is gone. Immediately, I know he isn’t in his room anymore. In fact, I can’t even sense him in the dorm. He doesn’t have a class this late, so I make my way outside to try and track him down. 

When I think of him, there are flashes of things in my head. There’s coffee? And he’s talking with someone. It occurs to me that this is the first time Dan has interacted with anyone all day so I’m eager to find him. I know I’m getting close because I can feel his distress strumming through my body. I’m pulled a few blocks away and when I spot the Starbucks, I know he’s there. I enter and find a spot not too far away so I can observe.

He’s sitting at a small table with another guy and looks distinctly uncomfortable. He’s chewing on his bottom lip and tearing a napkin into tiny pieces while the man next to him continues to chatter and gesture with his hands, seemingly oblivious to Dan’s nervous fidgeting. Every now and then, he stops long enough to say something to Dan, who replies with a quick answer and a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. At one point, his tablemate, who is apparently named Brad, stands and carries their coffee cups up to the counter for refills. Dan exhales a colossal breath and buries his face in his hands for a few brief seconds. Based on the mundane subject matter of their conversation, I wait for Dan’s stress levels to predictably decrease, but they never do.

I sigh in exasperation when Brad returns and continues to talk about the endless challenges of his marketing job. After sitting here for an hour, the only thing I’ve learned about Dan is that he’s extremely anxious, but I’m not sure why. 

“Come on Dan,” I think to myself. “Help me out a little bit. Why am I here? Why was I sent to help you?” 

But he continues just to sit, picking at his black fingernail polish and nodding absently at his friend. Eventually, I can feel the stress morphing into pure exhaustion and the look on Dan’s face reflects it. If Brad doesn’t wrap up his blathering soon, Dan just might fall asleep on the table as he’s talking. I’m sure he won’t be the first person to doze off during Brad's endless chattering. 

My wish almost comes true as Dan's head nods forward causing him to nearly topple out of the chair. Despite not falling, the noise of the scraping chair causes Brad to stop talking and, thankfully, Dan takes advantage of the break to stand up and make an excuse about early classes. I smile to myself, knowing his first class isn’t until 11:00. 

As they walk out the front door, I remain in my seat and watch as they say their goodbyes and end the evening with a brief hug. On the walk back to campus in the dark, I hang back further than usual. I want to sort through everything I’ve seen so far. I smile as Dan puts his earbuds in and the music starts back up again. If I’m lucky, he’ll read some more tonight. I’m not getting the information that I need, but at least this assignment has some benefits I wasn’t expecting. 

Another part of me hopes he’s not going back to his room. Maybe he’ll hang out with some of his neighbors on his dorm floor? Or perhaps he’ll settle in and text friends about his night at the coffee shop. 

After giving him plenty of space on the way home, I arrive after he does and make my way up to his room. But without even seeing him, I know that none of that is happening. I glance up and down the hallway and look at the whiteboards with messages scribbled on them, post-its with notes stuck to doors and walls, and colorful construction paper signs made with residents’ names on them. Doors of some rooms are propped open and the sounds of music and laughter spill out into the hallway. 

I stand staring at the 315 on the plain, unadorned wooden door to his room. If I didn’t know he was in there, I’d have assumed it was vacant because the silence that surrounds it almost feels like a vacuum. This building is full of life, of teenagers just beginning to find their way in the world, of young love, and of big dreams. I can feel it pulsing and emanating all around me, except from this room. I put my hand on the cool wood of the door, but it only confirms that the person inside is alive, but somehow still empty. There’s something else, but I can’t put my finger on it. Curiously, what little I’m picking up from him is suddenly blotted out. I can’t see or feel anything real, just a vision that is reminiscent of heavy grey storm clouds.

Something isn’t settling right from today. In the five years I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen a lot of people holding on to regret, anger, and pain. They act out towards others and hurt those around them. But somehow Dan is unreadable, and whatever he’s going through, my reason for being here is well hidden deep inside of him. Other than that man in the coffee shop, did he have any friends? He barely even touched his phone which was an anomaly for anyone these days, especially a college student. No texts. No emails. No social media posts. His contact with the outside world was minimal. I don’t know why I was sent to Dan or what my purpose is, but I do know without a shadow of a doubt, he needs me. The more I see, the stronger my pull towards him becomes. As I leave the brick building, my instincts are telling me I need to find out what is going on quickly.

Technically, I can just fade away into mist, but it doesn’t feel right. My human habits are still somewhat intact, so instead, I walk over to a group of trees and sit down underneath. I watch the students as they travel from here and there around the campus, most headed back to their rooms from what it appears. Observing Dan’s dorm, I count the windows until I zero in on his room. Unlike a lot of the windows, his isn’t lit up from within by bright lights, but instead a dull glow from what is likely a tv. Since it’s only about 8:30, I wait for some sign that he is up and moving around, but one never comes. I’m relatively close to the building so I try to concentrate on seeing if I can sense something from his room, music or voices perhaps, but can only pick up the muted sound of the television. 

Since he appears to be asleep, I lay down on the soft grass beneath the trees. Putting my hands behind my head, I gaze up into the leafy canopy and see glimpses of the full moon peeking through. I wait for the waves of nothingness to effortlessly envelope me as they do every night, but for some reason, much like the songs from earlier, they elude me too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dan POV**

This week is determined to be the end of me. I’m trying hard to make some changes, but life seems to be intent on winning the battle. I mean, I guess it’s better than my freshman year, but even if I managed to somehow burn down the dorms, it would still be better than last year. 

High school had not been kind to me. Being the awkward kid who dressed in black and was confused about his sexuality was not an enviable place to be. I never really fit into any social group and as a result, didn’t have very many friends. I’m not sure if that that caused the depression and anxiety or if I was going to be stuck with that no matter my social status. Medication and therapy helped, but realizing it was always going to be there to some degree was difficult to accept. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to not be the weird kid for once. College was my opportunity to start over and be who I really wanted to be.

Everything started great, but the stress of being so far away from home and not having my usual therapist anymore, combined with the weight of living with a stranger and balancing classes quickly took its toll. The anxiety was joined by paranoia, and everything fell apart spectacularly. I could hardly leave my dorm room which meant I missed too many classes, and in turn, fell behind in all of my coursework. My roommate was pretty decent about all of it, but I completely understood why he transferred to a different room at the semester break. My doctor increased my dose of medication, but that made me almost too tired to function. By some miracle, I scraped by and survived the first year. But just barely. 

My classmates spent their summers on vacation, and I spent mine back in my hometown in an outpatient program trying to relearn how to live life and stop self-destructive behaviors. By August, I was patched up good enough to go back to school and try it again. 

I was assigned a private room which helps in a way. It gives me the space I need and lessens the pressure of having someone right next to me constantly. 

I’m still failing miserably at social skills. It sucks to work so hard on something as simple as making friends and fail, while all around me everyone else doesn’t even think twice about it. Every word out of my mouth has to be analyzed and weighed, run over again and again in my head before I can even remotely think about letting them be spoken out loud. What’s it like to have a spontaneous conversation with someone? I’m just not brave enough to make an effort with the other students living on my dorm floor. They seem ok and friendly enough, but what happens if they think I’m weird like they did in high school? Or even worse: crazy.

Then yesterday, I thought that maybe it was starting all over again. I woke up late, which is actually the norm at this point, and while I was trying to make it to class on time, I started having the overwhelming feeling that someone was watching me. At first, I figured it just because I’ve been so tired lately from new medication, but I couldn’t shake it. It was so bad I ended up skipping my philosophy class and going back to my dorm. That’s when I first saw him. 

When I got on the elevator, someone I didn’t recognize got on with me. That in itself wasn’t strange, but the way he studied me was unnerving. If he weren’t so creepy, I probably would have stared back since he was by far the cutest guy I’ve seen in a long time. I felt a flash of fear when he got off on my floor since I knew he didn’t live here, but he walked right past me and into the lounge. I mentally berated myself for being weird and paranoid and tried to forget about both the man and my paranoia.

But I couldn’t. I tried to listen to music and read, which normally help when these feelings sneak up on me, but it was no use. In fact, that was the worse it’s been in years. The sensation of not being alone was oppressive and hanging over me like a dense fog. I took deep breaths and turned back to my book, determined to focus. And for a little bit, it worked. Whatever had been holding on to me loosened its grip, and I was able to relax for the first time all day. 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the peace. I had made a regrettable social commitment that couldn’t be canceled due to the fact I’d already rescheduled it twice. I drug myself out of bed, tried to make myself look reasonably put together, and made my way the few short blocks to the coffee shop. 

The week before, in an attempt to make an effort at meeting people, I signed up for a dating app. I quickly eliminated the vast majority of anyone who showed any interest in me whatsoever. My bar wasn’t set too high, or so I thought. My requirements seemed reasonable, being proper grammar and spelling, no bathroom selfies, and either be in school or have a job, but in the end, the only one left was Brad. 

I wasn’t horrified or anything the first time I saw him. At least he actually used his own photos in his dating profile and I didn’t seem to be getting catfished. But then he started talking. And talking. And talking. In a way, it wouldn’t have been so bad if he was halfway interesting due to me being such a social introvert anyway, but he had to be the most boring person I’d ever met in my entire life. If it weren’t for the two cups of coffee he bought me, I would have easily fallen asleep right there at the table. 

And to make matters worse, that feeling of dread started creeping in around the edges and I could feel eyes on me again. When I cautiously looked around with the purpose of convincing myself that everything was fine, I spotted the man from the elevator a few tables over from us. Not only was he not even drinking coffee, but he also seemed to be continuously glancing over at us. 

The social anxiety was quickly replaced by fear. Something was very wrong. Or was it? Maybe it was just a coincidence. I mean, if he was a student, he was probably just visiting someone on my floor. Not to mention that college students made up the vast majority of the clientele at this coffee shop. But what about all of the staring? First in the elevator and now here. I needed to leave.

I impatiently waited for Brad to pause the one-sided conversation long enough to take a sip of his coffee. When he finally did, I told him that I had an early class and some homework to finish up. We talked for a few more minutes on the sidewalk in front of the shop before thankfully ending the evening with a casual hug instead of a kiss. A sense of relief washed over me as I started the walk home. I survived a date, and even though he was the most boring person I’ve ever met, it still counted. 

I glanced over my shoulder a few times until I was satisfied the dark-haired man wasn’t following me before I slipped in my earbuds and hit shuffle on Spotify. The darkness and cool evening air helped soothe me and ease the crippling anxiety. I took deep breaths and tried to capture as much of it as possible as if I was trying to store it up inside of me for later. 

Even though it was only 8:30 when I got back to my dorm, my day was done. I turned on the tv for background noise, curled up in bed, and prayed that this horrible feeling of paranoia would go away. Thoughts about how physical pain is more manageable than mental pain started to float through my head, but I quickly stomped them down. Not again. I wouldn’t go down that road again. 

And now that it’s morning and the sun is shining, I feel a little better. Not great, but still better than yesterday which felt like a nightmare. As I sit up in bed, I try to list off reasons why today will be a good day: it’s Thursday so I only have one class today, my obligation to meet Brad is complete, I got to sleep in this morning, it’s finally starting to feel like Fall. Four things. It’s been a long time since I could name four reasons why the day isn’t going to suck. 

Buoyed by my list, I take a quick shower and get ready for class. With a little time to spare, I try to manage the piles of clothes all over my room and make a mental note to do laundry this afternoon. Giving up on the clothes after only accomplishing gathering them up and cramming them into my laundry basket, I grab my backpack and make my way outside. For the first time in a while, I actually feel rested and it also appears that I’m going to be on time for a class without even rushing across campus. 

Days like these are rare for me, so I’m determined to enjoy it. Although the last good day I had resulted in me meeting Brad online, so maybe I shouldn’t try to shoot so high. My physics lab partners had texted me several times over the past month trying to get me to do something with them, but I had declined every offer. Maybe I should see what they have planned tomorrow. A social outing is a reasonable goal. 

I make it to my History class with time to spare and manage to both stay awake and take halfway decent notes. It’s when I stand up to leave that my day takes a turn. I’m on my way out of the room when I realize that I left a notebook behind. As I turn around to get it, I come face to face with the tall, pale stranger. I casually slip around him and retrieve my notes, trying to act like my heart isn’t about to beat out of my chest. When I reach the hallway, I immediately spot him again standing casually off to the side. 

Picking up my pace, I head outside, the feeling of paranoia starting to press in on me. I keep glancing over my shoulder, trying to pick him out of the crowd and see if he’s following me or not. At first, I don’t see him, but after several more checks, I find him only a dozen or so strides behind me, seemingly out of nowhere. The elevator to my floor, the café, sitting in on my class, and now, following me afterword. This can’t be a coincidence. That horrible sensation of feeling like I was being watched for the past two days wasn’t paranoia, it was real.

I’m not just upset, I’m angry. I’m angry at him for making me feel this way, like I’m sinking back into a dangerous place. The paranoia isn’t a product of my broken brain, it’s because of this man. I stop cold in the middle of the sidewalk and whip around to confront him, not caring who’s watching or can hear. I square my shoulders, ignoring his surprised blue eyes and shocked expression when I start yelling.

“I don’t know what you want, but just leave me alone!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Phil's POV**

I’m sure I look like a goldfish, staring at him with huge eyes, mouth opening and closing without sound. I glance around me, positive that I’m mistaken and he’s actually yelling at someone else, but when I look at him again, his angry brown eyes are staring directly into mine.

“You can…see me?” 

Dan tilts his head to the side and squints at me. “Of course I can see you. If you’re a stalker, you aren’t a very good one. I’ve seen you following me around for the past two days.”

“That’s not possible…..”

“Listen, I don’t know what you want, but please just leave me alone,” he says, putting his hands out in front of him and backing away, the anger quickly being replaced by fear. “This is the last thing I need right now.”

“Dan! Wait! Just talk to me for a second…I’m not going to hurt you.” I try to look as non-threatening as possible. His stance relaxes a little bit, so I continue, trying to stay calm.

“Well then, go ahead. Say what you need to say.”

“I came here to help you with something.”

“You did? What?”

“Well, it’s sort of hard to explain, but I haven’t followed you around for long enough so I’m not quite sure.”

That probably wasn’t the right thing to say because his eyes widen and he starts to shuffle away again. When I replay my words in my head I can’t blame him. I’m really out of practice when it comes to talking to people.

“I swear I’ll scream if you touch me,” he says, panic growing by the second.

“You’re the only one who can see me,” I try to reason.

“Is this it? Am I finally cracking up?” he says with a shaky voice, which makes an odd, heavy feeling fill my chest. 

“No,” I answer softly. 

“Then why are you saying that? How is it possible that I’m the only one who can see you then? Prove it!” 

“You want me to prove that you’re the only one who can see me? Take a look around you, Dan. I’m invisible and everyone thinks you’re yelling into thin air.”

I watch as he looks around him and notices for the first time that the other students have stopped are standing frozen in place staring at him. He bites his bottom lip and stomps off quickly in the direction of his dorm, pushing his way through the gawking crowd. I jog to keep up with him, wincing at the unsettling feeling of my invisible form passing through the people. 

“Dan, wait a minute,” I plead before I notice that his head is bowed and he’s wiping away tears with the sleeve of his hoodie. 

“Stop, stop, stop,” he mutters to himself, covering his ears with his hands and picking up speed.

I’m at a total loss right now. Information gathering is a quiet and unobtrusive activity, but yet here I am, chasing after my subject as he runs away from me sobbing while trying to escape. I don’t understand what went wrong. I briefly consider stopping, but it’s my fault he’s so scared and feel a tremendous need to make it better. That’s why I’m here in the first place. 

I have a feeling that yelling after him will only make it worse, so I trail close behind as he furtively peeks over his shoulder at me every few seconds. We reach his dorm and he struggles through the groups of loitering students out front and pushes his way through the door. I hesitate and wait until two girls walk out and slip through the door unnoticed. I’m completely capable of walking through any kind obstacle, but I haven’t been dead long enough to enjoy that particular benefit of being dead. It still feels disconcerting to me.

Instead of taking the elevator, Dan instead flings open the door to the stairwell and quickly starts jogging up the steps, stumbling a few times on the way. I slip in after him and call up the stairs.

“Dan! Please wait!”

Something in me sinks when the only response I hear is a sob and footfalls echoing back down to me. He exits at the third floor and runs to his room, struggling with trembling hands to unlock the door. Once open, he dives inside and slams it in my face. I wait a minute to let him calm down before I hold my breath and smoothly float through the door. 

That was absolutely the wrong thing to do because when he sees me do it, he goes pale and starts trembling uncontrollably. I take a cautious step forward to try to comfort him, but he collapses in a weeping pile on his bed.

“Please go away,” he begs.

Lost and unsure, I sit down next to him as he cries, but he scrambles away from me until he’s curled up in a ball at the head of the bed.

“It finally happened,” he says, more to himself than me. “Fucking mental breakdown. It was just a matter of time, right?”

“Dan…”

“Please make this stop,” he whimpers.

I feel so helpless. I did this and I don’t know how to make it stop. I’m supposed to be here to help him, but instead, it feels like I pushed him off a cliff.

“I’m so sorry,” I plead. “I don’t know why this is happening either. I promise I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You’re supposed to help me?”

“Yes,” I answer.

“Why me? Is it because I’m….”

I wait anxiously for whatever he’s about to reveal, but he thinks better of it and presses his lips back together in an angry line. 

“Oh god, did I just ask a question to someone who isn’t even there?” he groans.

“I don’t know why,” I answer cautiously. His fists are clenched so tight that his fingernails are digging into his skin, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. I need to be more careful with what I say. “There’s a specific reason for each person I’m given. Sometimes it’s to help them learn something. Others it’s to guide their life in a certain direction. But none of them have ever been able to see me before.”

Still sniffling, he uncurls a little bit more and looks over his shoulder at me. He reaches a tentative hand out to touch me, but I flinch away, which makes him hesitate.

“I want to see if you’re telling the truth.”

I look at him and nod, giving him permission. His hand ventures out again and passes straight through me. He pulls it back as if burned.

“Did that hurt?” he says softly, his brown eyes big and scared. “No, not exactly. It just feels…unsettling.”

“Do you ever feel pain?”

“I don’t really feel much of anything.” 

He nods as if that makes perfect sense. “Lucky,” he mumbles. “Are people usually scared of you?” 

“I don’t know if they would be or not. This has never happened before. You’re the first person who has been able to see me.”

“So you really have done this before? You know, following people?”

“Haunting someone? Yeah, I mean, I’m a ghost so I guess that’s sort of my job.”

He moans and buries his head in his hands. “Oh my god. Why does stuff like this always happen to me?”

“This isn’t just about you, you know. This is weird for me too!” I insist. 

“It’s weird for the ghost. Great. My life is so fucked up that even the ghost is having a hard time coping with it.” 

He looks distraught again for a few seconds and then breaks out into laughter. I have no idea why, so I sit silently, waiting for whatever is going to happen next. I curiously watch him as he runs his fingers through his brown curly hair. Why can he see me? And are we really just sitting here casually having a conversation? 

“Thank you for talking to me,” I say. “I promise you don’t have any reason to be scared.”

“This isn’t real,” he mutters to himself. He seems to drift off in his own world for a minute, so I wait again until he continues to speak. “So what kind of stuff can you do?”

“What do you mean?” I’m caught off guard when his questions continue. My head is spinning. It’s been five years since I’ve had reason to open my mouth and talk, and now I’m sitting on a bed in a college dorm trying to explain how ghosts work when I’m not even sure I can answer that myself. 

“You know, make things float? Grant wishes?” 

“I’m here to set things right, not do party tricks. And ghosts don’t grant wishes. That’s a genie thing,” I answer, trying not to smile at his curiosity. How did I lose control over this haunting?

“So you really can’t do anything?” he asks, sounding disappointed.

“Fifteen minutes ago you thought you were cracking up and now you’re unimpressed with my lack of cool supernatural skills?”

“I’m not sold that I’m not delusional right now, so I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.”

I sigh and look into his expectant brown eyes as he’s still waiting for me to answer his question.

“I can hear and see things that I shouldn’t be able to. When you listen to music I can hear it, even if you’re wearing earbuds. I can also sense what you’re writing or reading from far away. I can’t see it exactly, just sort of feel it. When you were reading a book yesterday, I could see the words in my head.”

“I guess that’s pretty cool. Did you like the book?”

“I’m glad you’re impressed. And yes, I’ve actually read that book several times. It was one of my favorites.”

He looks like he’s going to comment, but thinks better of it.

“And you’re really going to fix what’s wrong with my life?”

“I don’t know, Dan. I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“What if I just tell you what I need help with?”

“It doesn’t seem to work that way.”

“Well how does it work then?” he says sharply.

“I just learn from observing.”

“But why? I can list off everything wrong with me right now!” 

His frustration with the situation is growing and he starts to pace nervously around the room, which almost feels too small now. I stare down at my shoes and frown. Flickers of something I can no longer identify start to fill my head. Worry? Fear?

“Fix this! Don’t tell me you’re here to fix things and then refuse to help me!” he shouts. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished for something like this to happen? For some sort of miracle to completely make all this all go away?” 

“I don’t know how yet! I want to, I really do!” I answer, trying to calm his desperation.

“I don’t want to be able to see you anymore!” He starts swiping his arms at me, trying to push me away, but they just go straight through me. He’s gasping for air as if he can’t breathe. Finally, he retreats and curls back up again, until he seems smaller than should be possible.

Surprise rolls through me, not so much because he’s yelling at me, but because I feel hurt. I turn my back to him and wrap my arms around myself, taking stock of what just happened. It almost seems as if not only can I see and hear what he does, but somehow his emotions can cross over too. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

I know he’s telling the truth, but the hurt feeling is still lingering. It’s been so long since I’ve felt such a human emotion, and memories of my past are flooding my head. It’s too much.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“I know, Dan. It’s ok. I just need to go for now.”

“Are you coming back?”

The agonized sound of his voice somehow reaches inside of me and I wince at the long forgotten pain. With a deep breath, I close my eyes and fade away as Dan jumps forward with his arms stretched out towards my disappearing form. 

As the physical distance between us grows, the pain starts to fade away. I try to sort out everything that just happened, but my thoughts are scrambled. 

In the end, even after I’m far away from the dorm room, I can manage to push away all of the other visions him in my head except for one. I can still see Dan laying on the bed where I left him, with tears now running down his cheeks. No matter how hard I try, it won’t go away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Dan POV**

I tossed and turned the entire night, so I’m grateful my first class isn’t until midday. It was one of those nights where it felt like I didn’t sleep at all, but yet I must have because the alarm still startled me awake. The same impossible question plagued me until daylight started streaming into my room: was the black-haired man real or not?

He had to be, right? I mean, until the last two days, I was holding my own. I was still exhausted from the side effects of the medication, but the depression and anxiety were at manageable levels. When things went downhill before, it was a slow decline, but this was so sudden. I wouldn’t go straight from ok to talking to people who weren't there, would I? Surely not. 

But if he really is a ghost and I’m not crazy, how do I prove it when no one else can see him? Maybe if he could write something down or leave something behind, do something tangible, perhaps? But what if he doesn’t come back? I know I told him to go, but after a while, I realized that I really didn’t mean it. As bizarre as it sounds, it was nice to have someone to talk to. Shit. I am crazy. 

My head is spinning as I dart around my room looking for clothes to wear and making sure I have everything I need for class. If he's real and assigned to observe me, maybe that means he'll have to follow me around again today. I don’t just want to see him, I need to see him.

I rush down to the cafeteria and finish some last minute homework as I eat cereal for lunch. Every few seconds, my eyes dart up and scan the cafeteria, looking for the man. By the time I make it to the bottom of the bowl, I am already feeling disappointed. 

On the walk to class, I continuously survey the crowd around me, almost falling several times from not paying attention to where I’m going. When I make it to Art History, I sit in the back of the tiered room so I can see everyone. I study the back of every student’s head, quickly ruling out that any of them are the person I’m looking for. Maybe he figured out how to be invisible to me also? The thought makes me feel sad, which comes as a mild surprise. I make a mental note to try to talk to him in case he can hear me and maybe ask him to come back when I make it back to my dorm room. 

Math class passes much in the same way, with me searching every room and face I see, only to again be disappointed. I start the slow walk back to my dorm room while debating if I want to take the long way just in case. Just as I’m deciding against it, I look up and spot him standing about 10 feet off the sidewalk. My heart starts pounding and I weave through the crowd and across the grass.

“Where have you been?” I ask anxiously. An apology is on the tip of my tongue, but he interrupts me.

“Don’t talk just yet ok?”

He stares at me until I finally nod.

“We need to find a spot away from all of these people so we don’t have a repeat of what happened yesterday,” he adds. I follow him obediently until we end up in the small grouping of trees not too far from my dorm.

“Where have you been?” I ask again.

“Just away doing some thinking.”

“About?”

“How to handle this. It’s not like I can just hang out and observe you now.”

“Sure you can.”

“I don’t know how that would work. The whole point is to go unnoticed, but clearly, that ship has sailed. I’m not sure how to do this and help you at this point. Maybe someone else needs to do it.”

“Would I be able to see them too?”

He stops for a minute and shoves his dark fringe out of his eyes. I can’t believe how real he looks. His mannerisms are so human I keep forgetting that I’m talking to someone who isn’t there.

“That’s a good question. I have no idea,” he finally answers. 

“So why leave then if it’s just going to happen again?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I need to think about it some more. I don’t know what’s going to be best for you.”

“But what’s best for you?” I push. “I thought you liked some of the same stuff I do, like the book. That has to at least make this more interesting for you.” I know that reasoning is a stretch, but I try it anyway.

“In a way it does, but in another way, it makes it more difficult. It makes it really hard to stay impartial.”

“So tell me how this works. Why do you haunt?”

“Dan,” he says in an unsure voice. “Do you really want to talk about this? I tried to explain it yesterday and you got angry.”

A little guilt starts to creep in. “I’m sorry about that,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to get so mad, but I was really overwhelmed. Can you really blame me?” He stares at me for a second before he tries again to explain.

“When we get an assignment we get a brief explanation, sometimes even with specific details. Occasionally, when I start observing the person, I can tell right away what’s going on even without it. Sometimes it’s a specific issue, sometimes it’s a little more vague.” 

“What explanation were you given about me?”

“There wasn’t much of one. Just your physical description and some information about you being in college. It’s unusual to get assigned to someone with no details.”

“So what happens now?” I ask hesitantly.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. Usually, I can sense what my purpose is without too much issue, but it seems to be different with you. Maybe it’s because when I couldn’t interact with the others, my senses picked it up quicker, but with you, that isn’t as strong. If I decide to stay, you may be stuck with me for a while until I figure it out.”

“How long do you usually stay with a person?”

“It just depends on what I’m supposed to do,” he answers with a shrug.

“But how can you tell you’re done?” I interrupt. 

“You can sort of tell by the aura they’re giving off.”

“Auras are real things?” I ask, somewhat amazed. “I always thought that was just a bunch of new age shit!”

“No,” he says with a smile. “They are very real.”

“What’s my aura like?” 

Something crosses his face that I can’t quite decipher. 

“Yours is hard to read,” he answers simply. He looks expectantly at me with big blue eyes, waiting for the next question I can come up with. There are so many things I want to know, but I'm not sure where to start.

“Last night when I tried to touch you, my hand went straight through like you weren’t even there. Can you really not feel that?”

“I can, but I don’t like the way it feels. When I walk through people, I feel bits and pieces of the other person, like I’m intruding on their private moments.”

“Did you feel that when I tried to touch you?” Another long pause. I open my mouth to ask again, but he finally answers.

“It was too quick for me to get a very clear picture. I’m sorry.”

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be alive?”

“I already know. I used to be alive.”

“Hold on…you’re a dead person?”

“What do you think ghosts are, Dan?”

“Oh. Right. Wait, did you just roll your eyes at me?” 

“All in all you’re taking this better than I imagined,” he laughs.

“You look so real, just as much as anyone around here,” I say, gesturing to the students walking down the distant sidewalks. “I forget that you aren’t an actual person sitting next to me.

“I’ll take that as a compliment then,” he replies with a big smile.

“Wait, do you have a name? Or, umm, did you used to have a name?”

“My name is Phil.”

I look down and realize I’ve been absently plucking blades of grass from the ground this entire time. Now that I know he has a name, he doesn’t just look like a real person, he feels like one too. The realization starts to make me feel a little self-conscious. 

“Is this what you looked like when you were alive?”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I mean, you’re the first to see me. I don’t see my reflection in the mirror, and when I look down, I don’t see myself. I don’t know if I’m the same as I was or not.”

“Would you like to know?” Glancing back up at him, I watch as he leans back on his elbows and stretches his long legs out in front of him. He tilts his face up at the sun as if warming himself. 

“Yeah, I think I would,” he finally answers.

“Well, first off, you’re tall and thin. Almost as tall as I am,” I start. “Your hair is dark, either dark brown or black, but your skin is really pale. Is that because you’re, you know….”

“A ghost?” he asks, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards.

“Um, yeah.”

“It’s ok. I know what I am, Dan. And no, I was always pale.”

“Your hair hangs down across your forehead so it makes you look even paler.”

At this comment, he laughs so hard he has to stop and wipe his eyes. “You mean like an emo fringe?”

“Yeah!” I answer back happily. “That’s exactly what it is. I used to have my hair like that about…umm….” my voice trails off. 

“About five years ago?”

I nod, feeling uncomfortable and a little awkward. “Isn’t that when you died?” I whisper.

“Yeah. My hair was like that when I died.”

“You’ve got blue eyes,” I tell him quickly, suddenly feeling a little bit on the spot as he stares back at me. “Actually, they’re really bright blue, sort of like the sky.” I feel my cheeks start to turn pink so I focus on the ground again.

“Go on,” he encourages quietly. “What else?”

“The strangest thing, other than you being a ghost, I guess, is your clothes. They’re different than they were yesterday.”

“What did they look like yesterday?”

“Umm…I…” I stutter, trying to remember. Everything that happened yesterday is such a blur already.

“Dan,” he says, his voice lower and serious. “Please. Please try to remember.”

I close my eyes and picture yesterday, me yelling and him following me back to my dorm. Him sitting on the edge of my bed while I cried. 

“Black skinny jeans and a button-up shirt. It was blue and had a pattern on it.”

“Dogs.”

My eyes snap back open. “Yes! It was dogs! How did you know that if you can’t see yourself?”

“And what about today?” he asks, ignoring my question.

My eyes run up and down his body while he sits frozen, waiting for my answer.

“The jeans look the same, but today you’re wearing a red t-shirt with a yellow star on it.”

He says nothing for a few moments before he silently kicks his shoes off and wiggles his toes. I look down at his feet and grin.

“Your socks don’t match,” I say with a smile. “I do the same thing.” I yank my shoes off and stretch my legs out in front of me and sit just as he is. He looks back and forth between our mismatched socks, the look on his face unreadable.

I’m not sure what to say, so I struggle to keep talking. “You have cactuses on one sock and rainbows on the other.” 

I run out of words the second I see the first tear fall from his eyes. I sit awkwardly, looking aimlessly around at everything except for him, but when I nervously glance back, I’m taken off guard when he locks his blue eyes with my brown ones. I want to look away, but I can’t. The intensity of his gaze makes a red blush start to slowly creep up my neck and into my cheeks. He tilts his head to the side and his eyes slowly examine me while the tears continue to slowly run down his cheeks. I debate taking a walk to give him some privacy, but just as I’m getting up, he starts talking again.

“C-can you see through me at all?”

“No, you’re pretty solid. Sometimes there’s a shimmer or a quick glitch, but for the most part, you look like a regular person.” Every word out of my mouth is said at a lower volume than necessary. It feels like with his tears, we crossed some sort of invisible line. They bound us together somehow. 

He considers my answer for a moment before wordlessly nodding his head. I suddenly notice that it’s much quieter outside and the sun is well on its way down to the horizon. A feeling a panic fills me when I realize that he’s probably going to leave for the day. The thought of going back to my room alone feels like a heavy weight in my stomach.

“Do you want to come back inside with me? It’s going to be dark soon.” I hope he doesn’t hear the edge of desperation in my voice. 

“I’m not keeping you from anything?”

“You followed me for the past few days and pretty much saw what my life is like. I think you probably already know the answer to that question.”

A small smile appears on his face and the weight is instantly gone as he quickly hops up off of the ground. 

“So how do we do this? Do you just magically appear in my room or…?” I ask as I drag myself up and start walking towards the dorm.

“No, I’ll walk up with you, but just don’t forget that you can’t talk to me until we’re in your room.”

I give him a blank stare for a minute before I realize what he’s talking about. I can’t talk to him in front of other people because they’ll think I’m crazy. Again. I want to tell him the truth, that I don’t care what they think anymore. 

This is real and that’s all that matters.


	5. Chapter 5

**P POV**

I’m grateful for the time to think as Dan and I silently make our way up to his dorm room. This is out of control. I shouldn’t be here anymore. How do I tell him about the memories that came bubbling up when he described my appearance? 

And that’s not the only thing. I told so many lies and somehow managed to justify them all. How do I explain to him that his aura isn’t there? I only saw it briefly that first night, but it looked like rumbling storm clouds. Considering his mental state, there’s no way I could tell him when he asked. The biggest lie of all was when I told him I didn’t feel anything when his hands passed through me. How would I even begin to describe what I experienced when I don’t understand it myself?

I can’t.

I’m so distracted by sorting through my own mental anguish that I’ve missed a very obvious detail: Dan is happy. We get off the elevator and he glances back over his shoulder at me, trying to stifle a big smile. This is the first time I get a clear view of the dimple on his cheek, which makes it impossible for me not to smile back.

When we go into his room, it’s like a completely different experience than the first time I was here. Instead of trying to convince Dan he’s not losing his mind, I’m excitedly running my fingers over the spines of his books, enjoying the jolts of memory when I spot a familiar one. Dan follows close behind, chatting away and holding up his favorite books for me.

I look around the room at the colorful posters and piles of clothes, and it suddenly hits me that there is only one bed.

“Dan? Don’t you have a roommate?”

“Oh, well, I had some….problems last year. They thought that maybe I would do better in a single room this year.”

“Doesn’t it get lonely in here by yourself?”

“Sometimes, I guess, but it’s not like I wasn’t still lonely when someone was here. At least this way I can concentrate on my classes and homework without the stress of having someone around all of the time.”

“Were things really that bad?”

“I’m tired of lying and telling people that ‘I’m fine’ when I’m really not,” he says tiredly. “You want the truth? Yes, things were that bad. I had a mental breakdown and started doing destructive things. I went through a program over the summer and switched medications, which helped. Things are still a struggle, but not like last year.”

I ponder his words for a minute, before my stomach sinks.

“Oh my god. That’s why you were so mad when you yelled at me for following you! I made you feel like you were getting sick again. I’m so sorry!”

“It’s ok, you didn’t know that.”

“But I should have! I’m usually able to pick up on these things, but everything is so different with you. My instincts and intuition don’t work on you for some reason.” 

I keep a wary eye on him as he plops down on his bed and leans with his back against the wall. There’s something about him that makes me want to protect him, make everything suddenly be easy for him. I can’t remember if either I knew kids like him or actually was a kid like him, but somehow I understand him even though I can’t get inside his head. He feels more than everyone around him but hasn’t figured out that this quality is what makes him so out of the ordinary in the best possible way.

“Phil? Is there something wrong?”

“No,” I answer quickly, snapping out of my thoughts.

“Can I ask you something personal?

“Of course.”

“What’s death like?”

I’m entirely unprepared for the question. I exhale loudly and sit down on the other end of the bed, feeling his brown eyes boring into me.

“Dan, I don’t…do you really want to talk about this?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Ok,” I say hesitantly. “But I don’t know what your limits are and I feel blind where you’re concerned. I can’t sense anything and I’m worried that this isn’t a good idea. Please tell me to stop if you need me to?”

I refuse to say anything else until he finally nods. “What do you want to know?”

“How did you die?”

I suck in a sharp breath. That’s another question I wasn’t prepared for. “I was in a car accident. I vaguely remember the accident, but not a lot of the circumstances around it.”

“Were you alone when it happened?”

“I’m not sure. I was in college at the time and on my way back home for a weekend.”

I watch carefully as Dan seems to drift off in his own thoughts. I’m scared I’m going to say the wrong thing and push him off a mental cliff. I just wish I could read him better. Since we’ve started talking about this particular subject, his aura has begun flickering to life again. From what I can tell, it still looks stormy, but maybe a little bit lighter in color. I have no idea if this is good or bad, or even what is triggering it to come back. 

“Did it hurt?”

“No, I don’t think so. It all happened so fast.”

“Did you see a tunnel or light or anything?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. It was like a light switch had been turned off. In a split second, everything was just gone.”

“When you were still alive, did you ever think about death?”

His aura sudden brightens up before fading back to its swirling grey color. “Dan, I think we should stop.”

“I’m ok. I want to know.”

“I sometimes did. I mean, I think everyone thinks about death at least a little bit. It’s natural to wonder what happens, but it’s nothing like I thought it would be. When I was alive, I always pictured death as being this big dramatic thing that would somehow carry me to some sort of epiphany and better life on the other side. It’s not like that, Dan. It’s lonely. Memory is such a fickle thing when you’re alive, but even more so when you’re dead. You don’t have any reason to hold onto the memories anymore, so they just fizzle away until there’s nothing left.”

“You said before that you don’t feel pain anymore,” he pushes, staring at me in rapt attention.

“That’s true, but I don’t feel anything anymore. All of the bad stuff is gone, but so is the good stuff. The idea of feeling nothing is romanticized, but trust me, it’s such a horrible empty feeling. Far worse than anything I felt while I was alive. It may be hard to believe, but the pain was better than the nothing I have right now.” 

The words start coming faster, and I can only hope that I’m saying the right thing. I’m scared that something is going to push him over the edge, but at the same time, I can’t stop them anymore.

“When the feelings and emotions are gone, you want them back. I find myself struggling to even hold on to the bad ones. Feeling it all slip away through your fingers is so frightening you’d give up a second chance at life just to hold onto the remnants of your first life.”

“Do you remember any of the good things?”

I shake my head. “Very little. I get flashes here and there, like when you were reading and showing me books, but almost all of it is gone. When I’m outside, I feel really drawn to the trees, but I don’t know what that means. Did I like doing things outside, maybe I lived by woods? I just don’t know. It’s like even the good things have a dark shadow now because I can’t fully recall them.”

Dan starts shifting around in his bed and slides down so his head is on the pillows. He grabs a blanket and stretches out. Despite sitting at the far end of the bed, his long legs come within an inch or two of me. I stare at the space between his real, human feet in his mismatched socks and the black jeans covering my ghostly leg. The figurative distance between the living and the dead feels like it just shrunk by a significant amount. I’m tempted to reach out and touch his leg to see if everything I felt yesterday is still there, but in the end, I resist.

“Phil?”

“Why did you cry when I described what you were wearing?”

“Because it made me remember some things. A lot of things actually,” I answer, debating how many details I want to give him if any. “That’s never happened before and it scared me.”

“I thought you said that once you’re dead, all of your memories fade away.”

“That’s right, but there is something about you that’s causing them to come back. I don’t know how or why or even what it has to do with you, but that seems to be what’s happening.”

“Is it because I can see you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, but I’ve never been emotionally involved with anyone I’ve helped before. That’s probably why we normally can’t talk or communicate with people; it's too easy to get attached.”

“Phil, I don’t understand how do you could not get emotionally involved with the people you help. You don’t feel anything towards them?”

“I feel like I’m responsible for their well-being, but that’s it. It’s my job to do this.”

“Does this mean you’re emotionally involved with me then? he asks. “I don’t know how people can turn off their feelings like that. I guess it just seems like I can feel everything.”

“I’m trying to turn them off now, but without much luck. So yeah, I guess that means I am emotionally invested in you.”

“Please don’t turn them off. I like this,” Dan says, yanking the blanket up a little higher. “Are you still thinking about leaving and sending someone else?”

“I’ll stay a little longer and see what happens.” What I really want to tell him is that I don’t think I could leave even if I really wanted to. There are questions I want to ask him. I know I should be trying to move this along, but there’s no hurry, right? 

“Phil? Do ghosts sleep?”

I can’t help but smile at the innocence of the question. “Sort of, I guess. We just let our minds go blank, but it’s not exactly sleep.”

“Where did you sleep last night when you left?” 

“Under the trees, the same ones we sat underneath tonight when we were talking.” 

He goes silent and I wonder after a few minutes if he’s fallen asleep. I glance over and his eyelids are fluttering and almost shut. I hop up and turn off the bright overhead light and quickly reclaim my spot down by his feet, leaving his dim table light on.

“Why can’t real people be like you, Phil?” he says groggily. 

“I could say the same about you.”

“Phil?”

“Yeah, Dan?”

“Please don’t leave again like you did before.”

“I won’t. I promise I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“You can lay down if you want,” he says through a yawn. “I’ll make room.” He pulls his long legs up so he’s curled into a ball, and I almost immediately miss the closeness of his body. With his eyes still closed, a soft smile appears as he snuggles down deeper into the blankets. 

“Did you figure out why you’re here?” he mumbles.

“I think I might have.”

I assumed that answer would startle him awake and start a barrage of questions, but his silence shows that sleep has finally won the brief battle. I watch as he fades away, glad that he’s going to be able to sleep better than last night. His chest rises and falls steadily with every breath. The blanket is held tightly in his fists which are tucked up underneath his chin. As I gaze at his sleeping face, the memories of my past life start swirling around me again, but this time I don’t fight it, I give in to them. This time, they are brighter and sharper instead of the fuzzy reminiscences earlier in the day. They are impossible to resist and I close my eyes and gladly sink into them.

“I remember kissing you. Why do I remember kissing you, Dan?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Dan POV**

I awake suddenly, startled by something I can’t quite place. I glance around the room, grasping onto my blankets so hard my knuckles are white. The sun is streaming in through the blinds that never got closed last night, but everything looks as it should, so I chalk it up to an overly vivid dream. 

My eyes finally land on Phil at the end of the bed. For someone who says he doesn’t sleep, he certainly appears to be out cold. He started out in a little curled up ball, but sometime in the night, he must have shifted around because now he’s stretched out on the bed, his long limbs overlapping with my own. 

Phil said when he touches someone, he can feel things. Does he feel anything right now when we’re like this? As I think back to our conversations last night, my dream starts to come back to me and my cheeks heat up. Is that what triggered my dream? I yank my legs back and retreat to the head of the bed. He’s starting to stir around, so I shut my eyes and hope that he can’t see into my thoughts right now. His movements stop, and I cringe. 

I’m the one who asked him to stay, so it’s not like I can pretend he’s not here. After a few minutes, I fake a loud yawn and stretch before sitting up in bed. 

“Good morning,” he chirps.

“’Morning,” I mumble back. 

“No classes today, right?”

“Oh, It’s Saturday! I sort of lost track of days.” I can’t help but smile when he laughs and his tongue sticks out a little. “Is there anything you want to do?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, we don’t have to, but if you want, we can go places and do some things,” I ramble, feeling a little foolish.

“Ok! Maybe you can pick something out?”

I stop and stare at him for a minute, squinting my eyes and tilting my head.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

I shush him and he immediately freezes with a questioning look.

“Your clothes! I can’t believe I didn't notice right away!”

“Oh! Are they different again? What is it this time?”

I just grin and shake my head.

“Oi! Dan! Come on! What am I wearing?”

“You’re wearing a bright yellow Adventure Time hoodie with Jake the Dog on it.”

“Oh good! That was one of my favorites!” 

As his face lights up and a huge smile spreads across it, I can’t help but wonder what he was like before he died. He was about the same age as I am right now when it happened. My college life has been spent trying to chase my mental illness with doctors and pills, but I’m guessing his wasn’t like that. He was the guy who everyone wanted to hang out with What were their lives like when he was gone? Is there still an empty space where Phil used to be? My train of thought is only serving as a reminder that I’m going to have a similar empty space soon once he’s gone. It troubles me more than it should considering I’ve only known him for three days.

“Dan? Is everything ok?” I look up and Phil’s standing a lot closer to me than he was a few minutes ago, but this time with a look of concern.

“Yeah, um, I’m fine. Just let me change clothes and we’ll get out of here, yeah?”

He scrutinizes me as if he’s searching for the lie he knows is there somewhere before he finally nods. I dig through a pile of clothing before finally pulling out a somewhat clean pair of jeans and sweatshirt. 

“Wait, aren’t you going to eat anything before we leave?”

“No, I usually skip breakfast.”

“Dan, you really should eat something. We slept late so it’s actually almost lunchtime.”

“Ok, dad,” I say with a dramatic eye roll as I walk over to my desk and dig around in the drawer for a granola bar. It isn’t until I turn around and see the pink color to Phil’s cheeks that I realize what I just said. “Oh, um, sorry,” I mumble, not meeting his eyes.

After that, the wait and subsequent ride downstairs in the elevator are awkward at best. Thankfully we aren’t the only ones in the elevator so we have a legitimate reason to not speak to each other and let the uncomfortable moment fade away. 

We exit the elevator in the dorm lobby and silently cut across the expansive green lawn of the campus. Since it’s Saturday and every outdoor area is crawling with students taking in the crisp Fall day, we continue to walk in silence with Phil following my lead. Once the crowd finally thins out in about ten minutes, we can finally start talking again. 

“So where are we going?” 

“It’s a surprise.”

“Really?” he asks, his face lighting up again. 

It’s so hard to look away from him when he gets excited like this. As we walk towards town, he’s gazing all around us in awe, like it’s the first time he’s ever seen shops, people, or cars before. I’m finding myself taking a second look at things I’ve chalked up as ordinary and uninteresting.

“Dan, there are a lot of people around. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

I wait until another group of people makes their way past us before answering, my face tilted downward so it doesn’t look like I’m talking to myself. “I’m sure. I really think you’re going to like it. Besides, we’re almost there.”

As we walk along the increasingly busy sidewalk, Phil squishes closer to me to avoid passing through the people around us. I feel a brief pang of guilt for not taking his dislike of touching people into consideration. I can see our destination up ahead, so I walk a little faster to get us away from the crowd. He looks almost relieved when I open the door and usher him inside. I was so focused on getting us here, I’m completely distracted and nearly trip trying to avoid walking right through him when I realize that he has stopped. 

“Phil?” I ask quietly, with my head bowed down. When he doesn’t answer, I peek over and find him gawking around him at the enormous two-story bookstore. 

“I’ve never seen a bookstore this big before,” he mumbles, spinning around in a slow circle.

I walk in front of him and gesture for him to follow me. Almost reluctantly, he trails behind as I climb the large, open staircase leading to the second floor. Once upstairs in the less crowded second story area, I wander over to an empty space. 

“So you like it then?” I ask. 

“Dan! This is great!” 

“Do you have a favorite section? What do you want to look at?”

His eyes immediately scan the surrounding shelves and he smiles my favorite Phil smile, the one where his tongue sticks out between his teeth just the smallest bit. 

“We’re actually in it already.” He starts walking down the aisle, eyes scanning all of the bright book covers.

“Gardening? Really?” I ask, surprised.

“I love plants. I used to have lots of cacti.”

I try to picture Phil in his former life, maybe in a dorm room like mine with potted cacti balanced on every surface. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine.

“Um, Dan? Can you do something for me?” he asks, looking a little sheepish. “Do you think you could maybe pick up one of the books and hold it open for me?”

I look at him, confused.

“I can touch things, but not interact or have any effect on them. I can do things like pass through a wall, but I can’t pick up a book or move things around. I guess it’s to keep us from communicating with people.”

“Ok,” I say, choking down an unexpected pang of sadness. “Which one?” And just like that, the cloud over his face is gone and he’s back to his cheerful self again. He bites on his bottom lip and examines the shelves again until he finally points to a thick book. I slide it out and open it, flipping through the pages and stopping when I get to the chapter about cacti. 

All of a sudden, I’m almost painfully aware of how close Phil is standing to me. He’s just to my left with his head close to resting on my shoulder. I want to turn and look at him, watch the way his face lights up as I slowly turn the pages for him, but there’s no way I can casually do that without making things awkward again. My mind wanders back to this morning and the way we woke up with our legs tangled together. I can feel my cheeks heating up so I force my eyes down to the book and start reading along with him to get my thoughts focused on something other than Phil in my bed.

“You really should get a cactus for your room.”  
I jump and almost drop the book, startled by his low voice that close to my ear. Oh my god. What’s wrong with me? It would be one thing to be having these thoughts if Phil were an actual person, but he’s not even real. That thought combined with the knowledge that he would eventually be going away causes a wave of despair to wash over me.

The next thing I know, Phil isn’t next to me anymore, he’s standing right in front of me, staring intently. I close the book and carefully set it back on the shelf next to us. He holds one of his hands out between us, palm turned up. Confused, I just look at it for a second before I slowly raise my hand and set it down gently on top of his. After a few seconds like this, he lifts his hand up so it passes through mine.

“Why are you sad?” he asks gently.

“I thought you couldn’t read me like you could everyone else.”

“I can’t really, but when I was standing close to you, I felt something inside of you shift.”

“But then why did you just touch my hand?”

This time it’s his turn to blush. “When I touch you I can feel and see other…things and thoughts….”

Oh god. My eyes widen and I take a step backward.

“It’s ok,” he says quickly. “I don’t mind…I mean…”

I turn my back to him, taking deep breaths to try and quell the growing panic. I walk down to the end of the aisle where more people are milling about so I have an excuse not to talk.

“Dan?” 

I wince when I hear his voice behind me and start walking again.

“Please don’t go away,” I hear him shout after me, causing me to freeze. A few people around me pause and give me strange looks, so I cut across the room and curl up in a big comfy reading chair.

“Dan,” he pleads, his voice close again. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but just please don’t leave, ok?”

I glance over my shoulder and look at the crestfallen look on his face. I remember how I felt that first night when he left, along with the sleepless night and frantic search for him the following day. Do I even have a valid reason for being mad in the first place? It’s not his fault I had that dream about him or am having these thoughts.

“Ok,” I answer, glancing up at him. “I won’t. I promise.” 

We both sit in silence for a few minutes before I’m relatively sure I’m not going to start crying. “Come on,” I say. “I want to show you something else, but it’s downstairs. I’m not going to be able to talk to you much because of the crowd.”

He smiles and nods, already happy again. I wish I could do that. I wish I could just move forward after a stressful situation and not let it preoccupy my brain for days on end, causing me to lose sleep and miss classes.

I stand and walk over to the staircase, feeling a sense of relief when I see him following after me as I start down the steps. 

“Where are we going?” he asks as we weave our way through the aisles of books.

“My favorite section. I have a hunch you’ll probably like it too.” I keep my eyes trained on his face, almost feeling a little nervous as I wait to see what his reaction will be. Once again I try to shove down my thoughts as I look at him, the blue of his eyes and the way his black fringe falls across his forehead, but immediately lose the fight. I guess it’s too late to care too much about that now since he already all but admitted to knowing how I felt.

When we finally reach my favorite section of graphic novels and anime, his eyes grow large. Instead of pouring through the books looking for something new, I just watch Phil instead. His childlike enthusiasm and bright outlook completely fascinate me. He weaves in and out of the people, his eyes frantically darting from book to book, not knowing what to look at first. Finally, after several minutes, he stops and looks around, waving me over once he spots me standing off to the side. 

“Dan! I love all of this! Will you help me again?”

I give a small nod, which is the only thing I can do right now because of all the people.

“This one!” he says, pointing to a Tokyo Ghoul book.

I pick it up and we resume the same position as upstairs, me holding the book open while he stands over my shoulder and reads, letting me know when I need to turn a page. But this time, I’m happily reading along with him, glad he picked one of my favorite animes. 

We stood like that for quite a while, silent and reading, moving around to try and keep Phil from brushing up against too many people. We finally decide to find someplace less crowded so we’ll be able to talk to each other again. As an impulse, I buy the copy of Tokyo Ghoul we’ve been reading just in case Phil wants to finish it later. We leave the store and head back towards the dorms.

We’re quiet as we walk, weaving around the other students as we get closer to campus. I keep stealing little glances at him, caring less and less if he notices or not. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but sometimes it seems like he’s looking back at me too.  
When we step into the elevator, Phil finally breaks the silence. 

“Dan,” Phil asks, hesitating.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think all memories are true?”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “If it’s a memory, doesn’t that mean it’s something that already happened?”

“But what if it’s impossible for the thing you remember to have even happened?”

“Maybe it’s a memory that hasn’t happened yet. You know, like a premonition of something that’s going to happen.”

When he doesn’t answer, I look over at him, his face completely unreadable. I wait for him to say something, but the silence stretches on. Maybe I said the wrong thing? 

“Phil? I don’t understand why you’re asking me this.”

“I understand why I’m here now,” he says with a shaky voice, “and there are some things you need to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm still guessing this is going to be around 8 chapters? Unlike everything else I end up writing, this one is going to be short and sweet!


	7. Chapter 7

**Phil POV**

Dan is staring back at me with a shocked expression, which I probably should have anticipated. I can’t pretend that I have any control over the situation at this point. Everything I’ve learned so far about what my purpose is in the afterlife has completely gone out the window. There is no more black and white, everything with Dan is a grey area and none of the usual rules seem to apply anymore. 

Even though he’s struggling to compose himself right now, looking at him still makes my heart flutter and I can’t even pretend that I’m not emotionally involved. This completely unexpected boy is perfectly sad and lovely and filled with a combination of dark and bright things. His brown eyes completely melt me and I can’t stop thinking about my memory of kissing him. But now, everything has changed. That memory isn’t a memory at all, it’s a glimpse of something that could happen. Something that I’m desperate for. And as he’s standing here in front of me, trying to comprehend what I’m telling him, he’s beautiful even in his confusion.

I return his stare, finding it impossible to look away. My head is spinning as I take in the true gravity of his comment: 

_Maybe it’s a memory that hasn’t happened yet. You know, like a premonition of something that’s going to happen._

Something in my brain clicked when he said that, and it all fell into place. He’s right, and somehow he saw what I’ve managed to miss. All of the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. How could the memory of Dan and I kissing even be possible? Even if kissing him was something that occurred in my past and it’s one of the memories that I’ve lost, Dan would remember it happening. It’s impossible that we’ve kissed before, but yet there it is: a memory. Why does it feel real if it’s not? His explanation is the only one that makes sense. It’s real, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s what could happen.

There are so many things I want to say to him, but I’m terrified that I’ll scare him away. My stomach sank earlier in the day when he walked away from me in the bookstore. I didn’t know any other way to tell him that I saw what was in his dream last night because of how we were tangled up and touching while sleeping. What little I did say frightened him so much that I didn’t dare tell him all of the feelings that I’m trying to hide. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would’ve made him realize that everything he’s feeling isn’t one-sided. 

“Phil? Are you going to tell me what’s going on? I don’t understand. Why are you asking me about memories?” he asks in confusion. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here now that you know?”

“Dan, maybe this isn’t about you, it’s about me, about us together. I think I’ve been looking at this entire thing the wrong way.”

“I thought you said that’s how haunting works. You’re supposed to be here to help me, right?”

“But what if it’s not? What if you’re the one who’s here for me?”

He starts to chew nervously on his bottom lip and I debate on how to continue. I’m well aware that he could just walk away at any time and never look back. 

“Why were you sad earlier in the bookstore?” I ask quietly. “I think I know, but I want to need to hear you say it.”

Dan finally pulls his eyes away from mine and focuses on the ground in front of him.

“Phil, I just..I like having you here. Everything is easy with you. You make my life better, and I don’t even understand how it happened. You’ve been here for three days and you’ve done more for me in that time than years of doctors and pills. I know you have to leave now that I’m getting better, and I’m terrified because I want you to stay. And there’s more than that…other reasons…” he trails off. “I guess you know about the dream I had then?”

“Yes.”

“Are you mad?”

“Mad?” I ask, looking at him in sheer disbelief. “Why would I be mad?”

“Because you don’t want me thinking of you in that way. I mean, most guys don't want to have other guys having dreams about them.” 

I pause before I start, keeping my eyes trained on his face, not wanting to miss a single thing. 

“Dan, do you remember when you were describing what I looked like to me and I told you it was bringing back memories?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I was scared to tell you what they were, one of them in particular.” His expression gives away nothing, so I continue carefully. “One of them was a memory of us kissing.”

His eyes widen and he stops chewing on his lip. “But how? That’s never happened before.”

“That’s what I couldn’t figure out, but somehow, you managed to understand. It’s not a real memory, it only felt like one. Kissing you wasn’t something in the past, it’s something that could happen in the future. A premonition, not a memory.”

Dan’s cheeks flush pink and I inwardly groan. How is it possible that one person could be this adorable? And why am I even thinking about that right now when there are more important things at hand? I take a deep breath and refocus on what I need to ask him.

“What if I was real again?” My heart is pounding so loud I can hardly hear my own question.

“Do you want to be real?”

“Yes…I don’t know. It’s never had any appeal until I met you.”

“Wait, is that something that can happen? Can ghosts come back to the living?” 

“Sometimes in very specific circumstances,” I answer. “That’s why I was sent to you. That’s why I’m here.”

My entire body feels frozen as I carefully watch him process this information. Emotions are flashing across his face so quickly I can hardly keep track. I want to shake him and beg him to say something, but I know this is a lot. If I was real, I could do what I really want to be doing right now. Instead of just standing here watching him, I could hold him against me and tell him everything’s going to be ok as long as we’re together. 

“Phil!” he says loudly. 

“Hmm?” I half answer, still in the fog of where that daydream was leading me.

“Did you just say you can come back? You never thought to mention that to me before?”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds, Dan. 

“Just come back then! What are you waiting for? What do you have to do?”

“If I come back, it’ll be like I never existed. I’ll start over with a new life. I’ll be given new ‘memories’ and the people around me will have ‘memories’ of me too.” 

“So there’s all of a sudden a person where there wasn’t before, but it will be like you’ve been there all along?”

“Yes.”

“But Phil, you’d still be here though! You’ll be alive!”

“Dan, I don’t think you understand. Not only will I lose my first life and everything I remember from it, but I’ll also lose what I’ve gained from being dead.”

“So? Your first life is already gone!”

“So that means I lose this too,” I say, motioning back and forth between the two of us. 

“Wait…you’ll forget about us and the past three days?”

“That’s why this has as much to do with you as it does with me. The reason it can happen is because our bond is strong enough to bring me back. The real question is, is it strong enough for you to be able to find me once I’m back.” 

“But if you came back and didn’t remember me, would I still get to keep the memories of when you were here? Will I know you’re out in the world somewhere and be able to find you? 

“Yes, but if you find me, you’ll have to do something to bring my memories back so I’ll remember you too. Just like you’ve managed to do here with my past life.” 

“What if I’m never able to find you?”

I can’t bring myself to answer that question, so I just wait. I can see the exact moment the realization crosses his face, and my heart breaks when I see the first tears fall down his cheeks. 

“I’ll have to live with knowing the person I’m meant to be with exists in the world, but I can’t find him,” he says sadly, answering his own question.

“It’s a big gamble, Dan. You don’t have to do this.” 

“There has to be a way. If there weren’t, it wouldn’t have happened like this. I wouldn’t have been able to see you when no one else ever could,” he insists. 

I don’t know what to do here. I need to know what he’s thinking right now. I want to make sure he’s telling me the complete truth, that he really wants this, because if he doesn’t, there is no chance of us finding each other again. I reach out for his hand with the intention of being able to see what’s in his head, but instead of my fingers passing straight through him, I feel the warm, smooth skin of the back of his hand. 

Dan doesn’t realize at first, so I observe him as he continues to talk about fate, waiting for the instant he notices what’s happening. I rub little circles on the back of his hand with my thumb, fascinated by the sensation of being able to feel something again. I’m so mesmerized by it that I don’t notice that he’s stopped talking until his fingers trace a line down the side of my cheek. When he touches me, it doesn’t feel unsettling anymore. It feels like something else, some other emotion I can’t quite remember enough to place.

“But I thought you couldn’t feel….?”

“I’ve never been able to before.”

“Can you still see what’s inside my head? What I’m thinking?”

“Not exactly. It’s like I’m halfway in between. I can feel you, but not like I would be able to if I were alive. I can still see your thoughts, but not like I have been able to while dead.” 

“Don’t you see? It’s a sign we’re on the right track! It’s like a little bit of you is already here again! I don’t have a choice. I have to try at least to get you back.”

“Dan, you always have a choice,” I remind him.

“No, I don’t. What are my other options?” he murmurs, still tracing his fingers over my skin. “Have you just leave and move on to the next person? Maybe get to keep you like this, but never really truly get to be with you in the way we want?” 

Again, I wait for him to expound, but he’s so enthralled by touching me, I almost don’t want to interrupt him, so I just watch him instead. His curls are falling across his forehead and his perfect pink lips are curved up into a slight smile. I reach up with my other hand and gently push his hair out of his eyes. As I run my fingers through his hair, I tug on a few of his fluffy brunette curls, causing him to laugh softly. 

My entire body feels the sound, and at that moment, I find it impossible to believe that I could ever forget him. I would somehow always know he was out there in the world. He’s right. We have to do this. What we are now will never be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, CornyBird. Officially nine chapters instead of....eight ;) I'm trying to resist dragging this out and making it a super long epic angst-filled book! lol


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, so much for my two updates a week goal. Too much life and stuff this week!
> 
> Hope you like it!

**Dan POV**

 

“Hey,” Phil says, poking me.

“Hmm?”

“What are you thinking right now?”

“That you have really soft skin.”

“Dan!”

“What? You asked!” To prove my point, I push the sleeve of his yellow hoodie up and run my fingertips up and down his arm. I smile smugly when he shivers. What I’m actually thinking about is that I want to stop time. Not forever, just for a little bit. I know there are more discussions to be had and big decisions to be made, but for right now, I want to be like this, both of us sitting cross-legged on my bed and facing each other. Our foreheads are almost touching as we look down and watch my hands explore his bare skin.

The moment breaks when there's a sudden sharp knock on my door and we both jump.

“Hey, are you in there?” a female voice calls.

Phil gives me a questioning look and I can only shrug my shoulders in confusion, having no idea who would be looking for me in the middle of the night. I open the door and am greeted cheerfully by two girls who I vaguely recognize as living on this floor. Before I can even say anything, they start chattering and drag me down the hall and towards one of the dorm rooms that has the door propped open. I look back in desperation at Phil who is just peering back with wide eyes as we go inside.

There are three people in the room, the two girls who were at my door and a boy who is sitting on on the floor. They’re all talking at me, but my thoughts are still with Phil and I don’t catch any of what they’re saying. Apparently, this is the college life everyone keeps talking about.

“We found him!” the girl with the red hair says.

“Umm…I’m sorry?” I ask, trying to refocus.

“You’re Dan, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” Would this go quicker if I said no?

“So how come you spend all your time hiding in your room?”

This time it’s the tall boy with glasses speaking. I sort of wished I had at least taken the time to read their names on the doors as I passed down the hall every day so I didn’t feel like such an ass right now. I raise an eyebrow as she slaps him on the arm before she starts talking again.

“We figured you were probably just staying in a girlfriend’s room and coming back for clothes now and then since no one ever sees you. We’ve heard you talking in your room the past few days so we thought we would make you come out and socialize since you seem to be here again.”

I look back at their three curious faces as they wait for me to confirm or deny their theories.

“Oh, uh, no. I’m always here. I just read and listen to music a lot.” At least it was a question I could answer truthfully. “And I’ve just been on the phone a lot this week.” It’s a blatant lie, but the truth isn’t an option in this case.

“You should come hang out with us then sometime,” the brunette girl chirps.

“Sure,” I answer.

But probably not.

“We’re getting ready to watch a movie if you’d like to stay,” the boy suggests.

“I’m actually waiting for a friend,” I stutter, “so I need to go, but thank you for the offer.”

“So bring your friend down here too,” the brunette urges.

“Oh, um…no. I don’t think he’ll want to do that.”

She tilts her head and raises an eyebrow at my answer, so I quickly smile and give them a half wave as I make a hasty retreat. Once out the door, I immediately see that Phil isn’t standing in my doorway anymore and sprint the rest of the way down the hall. Thankfully, he’s stretched out on my bed with his eyes closed, looking peaceful. I close and lock the door firmly behind me before I sigh and quietly sit down next to him.

“They couldn’t see you,” I say. “Part of me was hoping they could see you since you seem to be somewhere in the middle and then we….”

“Wouldn’t have to do this?” he finishes.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I thought maybe since you can feel things now there might be a chance we could do this without you having to leave.”

“That should be you,” he says softly without opening his eyes.

“What? You think I should be a 19 year old girl who drags strangers down hallways?”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says, opening his eyes and shifting over onto his side facing me. “You should be hanging out like them in dorm rooms like a regular college kid, going to parties, making friends. Not seeing dead people.”

“Phil, I wasn’t a normal college kid before you showed up. If I wanted to do any of those things, I would have been doing them before you started ghost stalking me. That’s just not me.” I try to catch his eye but he looks away, so I lay down on the bed next to him so we’re facing each other. “I want you.”

He looks at me skeptically so I try again to convince him. “Phil, were you able to pick any of that conversation up?”

“No. I tried to hear inside your head again,” he admits, “but I don’t seem to be able to do that very well anymore.”

“Well, if you had, you would have heard me politely turn down their invitation to stay because I had someone coming over.”

“Do you think those girls like you?”

“Have you lost your mind, Phil? Why would I want to be with a college girl? I thought you probably figured that out after spying on my horrible date at the coffee shop.”

He raises an eyebrow and looks at me not unlike what the brunette just did a few minutes ago when I said a guy was coming to my room.

“In case you need more clarification, I don’t like girls in that way. Maybe you were confused by the way I keep touching you and am laying down next to you in my bed?”

“It’s not too late for you to change your mind about this.”

“That’s not going to happen. I promise you, ok?”

He nods slightly but doesn’t look convinced, so I reach over and weave my fingers together with his.

“I guess I’m just scared. I’m scared we won’t be able to find each other or that you’ll meet someone else and stop looking for me. I really won’t be able to blame you if you choose to do either of those things.”

“Phil,” I ask cautiously, “do you not want to try to do this anymore? Are you having second thoughts?”

“Second thoughts about being alive and with you? No. Second thoughts on what it’s going to do to you if this doesn’t work? Yes. I mean, if you can’t find me or make me remember you, my new life will carry on and I’ll never know the difference, but you’ll know. You’re the one that will have to live with the consequences of this decision.”

My heart breaks into about a million pieces, but I don’t know what I can do to assuage his fears. Or mine, for that matter. I turn over and scoot back against him so we are spooned together, his chest against my back with his arm tightly around me and holding me in place. What can you even say in moments like this? Sometimes the silence speaks louder than any words we could ever come up with, so we just lay like this, intertwined in the stillness of the room.

“Dan?”

“Yes?” I ask, twisting around so I can see his face.

“Tell me what it’s going to be like once you find me,” he asks, looking at me with hopeful blue eyes.

“I’m going to bring you back here until we find our own place and get out of this god awful dorm. It’s going to be filled with cacti, about a million mismatched socks, and all of our favorite books. I’ll be at school part of the day, but then I get to come home to you every night. We can play video games and snuggle on the couch….”

I thought it would lift his mood to hear all of these things, but I stop when, if anything, he looks even more distressed. I trace back over everything I’ve said, trying to figure out what part of it is upsetting to him. Finally, I realize the fatal flaw to all of my plans.

“Phil, how long do you think it will take for me to find you?”

“I honestly don’t know, Dan. I mean, maybe you’ll wake up the next day and run into me on the elevator on the way to class. On the other hand, it could take years. All of those things you want to do, you may be out of school, have a job, and a completely different life by then.”

“Then we should probably do this soon,” I say after a deep breath, hoping I sound braver than I feel, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth I feel sick at the thought of being without him for any length of time.

“This isn’t a fairy tale Dan,” he says grimly, trying to pull his hand away.

“But what if it is?” I question, refusing to let him go, holding on to his hand even tighter. “This could be like…..” I struggle to think of some sort of supernatural fairy tale but can’t come up with anything. I’m not sure how things have gotten so turned around, with me reassuring him instead.

He squints and raises an eyebrow at me. “Since when does the emo kid in black give so much credence to hearts and flowers and true magic love?” he teases.

“Shut up!” I say, feeling my cheeks turn pink.

“Wait,” I say quickly. “You can pick things up now, right? You get flashes of memory when you recognize things from your former life, so who is to say that can’t happen with your ghost life? When you leave, take things that will help you remember the past few days!

Phil looks at me thoughtfully. “I don’t know if that will work or not, but we can try. What should I take?”

We both get out of bed and start looking around my disaster of a dorm room, trying to figure out what one thing would best jog his memory on the off chance that it would make it to his next life. My eyes finally land on the Tokyo Ghoul book I bought from the bookstore. I turn around and hold it up, hoping that this will be enough.  

His face lights up and he smiles when he sees it. He reaches out to take it, but I slip past him and start digging around on my desk for a blank piece of paper.  I quickly scribble something down on the paper before folding it up, sliding it into a random envelope, and sealing it. As a last thought, I write his name on the front before tucking it inside the book.

I frown, not understanding the connection between the pink shirt and myself. It’s been buried in the pile of laundry since Phil showed up earlier in the week. Why would it make him think of me? Before I can ask, he spots the book I’m holding and smiles. He reaches out to take it, but I slip past him and start digging around on my desk for a blank piece of paper. I quickly scribble something down on the paper before folding it up, sliding it into a random envelope, and sealing it. As a last thought, I write his name on the front before tucking it inside the book.

“What does it say?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter right now. It’s just something to help you along in case the book makes it to the other side with you.”

I forget that he’s going to permanently lose the rest of the memories of his former life once he leaves. I idly wonder what his life was like. What did he study in school, who did he love? What happened to the people he left behind after he died? As I watch him tuck the tshirt and book inside the pocket of his hoodie, I feel like I’m taking on part of their loss.

“Dan?”

I shut my eyes and turn my back so he can’t see my tears. The room is starting to brighten as night gives way to the next day, and we both know what’s getting ready to happen. His arms wrap around me from behind which only causes me to cry harder.

“It’s time,” he murmurs by my ear. I can only nod.

“Dan, promise me that you’ll be ok, even if you can’t find me.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“You have to. I’m not going to walk away unless you do.”

I bite my bottom lip and reluctantly nod again, not sure if I’m even capable of saying the words. And maybe a part of me still doubts my sanity just like when I started seeing him. To me he’s already real, but what does that even mean? The feelings are real and I guess that in the end, that's all that matters.

He unwraps his arms from around me and pulls away and it’s all I can do to keep from collapsing on the floor. I wipe away my tears with my sleeves, trying to look brave, but when I look up at him, he doesn’t appear to be in any better shape than I am.

He takes my face in his hands and leans in so our foreheads are touching. I close my eyes and try to remember every single detail about this moment, knowing it’s going to be all I have to hold on to for a while now. When I finally open them, his lips meet mine in one single soft kiss. I try to capture his lips again, but he stops me.

“Not like this. I want to wait until we find each other again,” he says softly with a wavering voice.

“I’ll wait as long as it takes, Phil. Please tell me you believe me when I say that.”

“I do,” he whispers into my neck as he pulls me even closer for one last hug before releasing me and walking to the door. He stops briefly with his hand on the handle and I think for a fleeting second that he’s going to change his mind and come back, but he opens it and slips out silently before closing it behind him.

The floor feels like it’s moving underneath my feet and I stumble over to my bed to sit down. I start gasping for air and trying to fight back against the darkness that’s creeping into the edges of my vision. I grasp tightly onto my blankets hoping the action will anchor me and keep me from spiraling downward.

Suddenly, I scramble to my window with tears streaming down my cheeks. The sun is just starting to rise, but it’s muted by the thick bank of fog that has settled over the campus during the night. My heart pounds as I wait, hoping to see one last glimpse of him. After a few minutes, I spot his tall figure walking away from my brick building, cutting across the grass and towards the trees. Part of me wants to slam the window open and scream for him to come back, but I can’t. This is the only way.

I put my hands on the cool glass, never daring to take my eyes off of him until finally, he simply disappears into the fog.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I ended up going in a bit of a different direction with the story, so you're getting a few extra chapters :)

**POV Dan**

I sit on my bed staring out the window at the busy scene below me. For the third year in the row, I watch as students, parents, and resident advisors scramble to unload cars and move belongings into the dorms, but never before with such intensity. There is the usual mix of familiar faces and apprehensive freshmen being given direction as they haul boxes and bags towards the building. Since I decided to stay for summer school, I didn’t have to pack and move out for the summer, so the beginning of my Junior year is oddly stress-free. 

There’s a knock on my door, and I can hear it being shoved open, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the mesmerizing swirl of people outside. 

“Dan!” 

“Hey,” I answer, hoping that it’s cheerful enough to keep her from asking me if something’s wrong.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you miss us?”

I glance over my shoulder quickly to see Leah propped up in my doorway. After our first run in last year when she and her roommate Annie forcefully drug me out of my room and into theirs, they persistently harassed me until I finally agreed to a few random social events with them. What made me give in wasn’t necessarily the companionship, but the opportunity to widen my search for Phil.

“At least come by later and hang out for a bit? We’re getting pizza.”

“Yeah, come and get me before you order,” I answer, halfheartedly. I make a mental note to not deliberately alienate people who are just trying to be kind to me. The reality of my situation with Phil is starting to set in, and I should probably make the best out of it while I wait. Plus, when I find him, I don’t want to tell him that I sat by myself and was miserable while he was gone. I want him to know I was ok. 

She smiles and continues to drag her luggage and bags down the hallway to her room. I sigh and anxiously return to my vigil at the window.

The first few days he was gone was spent in a general panic. I repeatedly examined every face in every class, every tall, lanky boy making his way across campus, and each and every mop of dark hair I spotted in my daily visits to the coffee shop. 

Fall turned into what felt like the longest winter of my life, followed by an equally as tortuous spring and summer. And now here I am again, getting ready to start a new school year. My frantic searching waned over the summer since the number of students dropped dramatically, but now as the campus refills, the familiar urgency is back even more so as the one year mark of Phil's departure nears. 

I had been counting down the days until ‘move-in’ day on campus, where there would be thousands of new people roaming around the area, and now, it’s finally here. I turn back to the window and return my rapt attention to the swirling crowd below me, watching intently for a glimpse of raven black hair and ivory skin. 

_Maybe this will finally be the day._

Of course, I’ve repeated those exact same words to myself every day for close to a year. The funny thing is, I still believe them just as much as I did on the day he left. I’ve thought of him almost obsessively all of this time, still hoping and praying that even just a small bit of what connected us in the first place still remains intact. Some days I almost feel like he is with me. One day a few weeks ago when I was reading one of his favorite books, I was overwhelmed with the sense that he was close by. I searched for days, genuinely believing that it was finally happening. I held onto that feeling like my life depended on it, but it slowly faded away, leaving me adrift in solitude yet again. 

I had managed to fight off Leah's attempts to fix me up with guy friends of hers for the past six months or so. I thought about humoring her by faking my way through a date with someone, but that wouldn’t be fair to me, the guy, or her. And honestly, it made me feel sort of sick to think of being with anyone other than Phil, even though I knew nothing would come out of it. 

After hiding in my room for the better part of the day, unmoving from my spot by the window, I’m struggling to keep awake. The majority of the kids have finished moving their things back into the dorms, and as dinnertime approaches, the crowd has dwindled considerably. My eyes are randomly examining the remaining people one by one on the sidewalk below, skimming over the tops of their heads….curly brown hair, long red hair, straight blonde hair, brown ponytail, short black hair….

Short black hair.

I sit up straight and am instantly wide awake. Short black hair, tall, black pants. Wait…glasses? He didn’t have glasses, but maybe because he was dead. Do ghosts have bad eyesight? If he would just turn around a bit more. I can’t tell from here! I jump up from my bed and dive across the room to the door, flinging it open, and run directly into Leah, instantly knocking her onto the floor. 

“Oh god! I’m sorry!” I shout, grabbing her arms and helping her up off of the ground. 

“I was just letting you know we ordered the pizza and it should be here in a few minutes,” she says, trying to balance herself.

“Ok, ummm…” I stammer, looking back and forth between her and the elevator door.

“Dan, you promised,” she says with a frown.

“Want to go eat outside to eat?” I ask in what I hope is a casual manner. 

“Pizza picnic!” Leah says happily. 

“Let’s just go downstairs and wait for the pizza to get here and then we can just go out on the lawn and eat,” I suggest quickly.

“Ok. Let me grab Annie and Sam and get our money,” she says walking back down the hall.

It takes me about 10 seconds to dart back to my room, tear through my drawer and dig up a few dollars and grab a bottle of soda off my desk. I look out the window, and to my relief, the man is still there. I slam my door and run across the hall to the elevator, quickly hitting the down button. Maybe I have time to run back into my room and check peek out the window one more time? I stand nervously switching my weight back and forth and hitting the elevator button a few more times as if that would hurry it along. The door finally opens, and I step in and lean against the door to keep it from closing.

“Elevator!” I yell down the hallway. Thankfully, I can hear the three of them jogging down the hallway. 

“Are you ok, Dan?” Annie’s boyfriend Sam asks.

“Yeah, fine.” Although I’m sure I looked anything but fine. When the elevator doors open to the lobby, I run ahead and shove through the doors leading to the front of the building. I look around in a panic, trying to spot him.

Gone.

My stomach sinks and I instantly feel sick. I dash around the corner of the building, hoping that maybe the man is still in sight, but nothing. Despite my friends who are probably confused and waiting out front, the crush of loneliness hits me with full force. I wipe my eyes with my sleeves and take deep breaths, forcing myself to control my emotions. It probably wasn’t him anyway. I’m just on edge since it’s been almost a year. Every day hurts, but the pain seems a little sharper today. I turn and retrace my steps back to the front steps.

“Where did you go? Are you ok?” Leah asks, concerned.

“Yeah. Sorry. I just thought I saw someone I knew.”

“Well, let’s go find a spot, I guess,” she says, glancing back at Sam who is holding the pizzas that apparently got delivered in the short time I was searching for the mystery man.

We walk over to an open area on the lawn and arrange ourselves around the large boxes. Used to my preference to be left alone, they are thankfully content to let me just sit quietly as the three of them chat happily about the beginning of the school year. If you’re an introvert, forced socialization is a nightmare, but at least they seem to respect that. I can’t take my eyes off of our building and the adjacent parking lot. I know it’s probably useless at this point, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I looked away. 

Eventually, I eat a few pieces of pizza and at least halfway tune myself into the conversation, only contributing a few smiles and nods of agreement when appropriate. As far as people go, the three of them are actually pretty nice. Leah invites me to every single social outing, and although it’s hard for me, I give in about once a week, usually to something that involves food or a movie, two activities with good excuses not to talk.

As darkness falls, we throw away our boxes and trudge our way back into our dorms. As always, I retreat to my room while the three of them carry on with their stories of summer vacations and plans for our Junior year.

I plop onto my bed and turn on my small reading lamp. As I have for almost every night for a year, I pull my copy of Tokyo Ghoul, identical to the one Phil took with him, out from beneath my pillow. Not for the first time, I wonder idly if the book made the trip with him to wherever it is he exists now.

My fingers gently touch the well-worn pages, and my eyes run over the familiar artwork. I think I know every page by heart at this point. One by one, I turn each page until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. The book tips unnoticed out of my hands and I roll over onto my side in a fetal position, curling up against the pile of pillows next to me.

My final thoughts are the same tonight as they are every night: _Maybe tomorrow will be the day._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So clearly my original estimate of 8 chapters was really off! Expect at least 3 more after this one. :D

**Phil POV**

“Ouch!”

I stick my finger in my mouth without thinking and cringe at the metallic taste. This office is filled with hundreds of books, so it’s probably not a good sign that I get a papercut as soon as I touch the first one. I lean back in the squeaky chair and gaze around the small room, trying to figure out if I’m impressed, nervous, or just flat out scared. 

It’s incredible how much your life can get changed in such a short amount of time. I’d graduated from my grad school program almost four months ago, but I’d been sending out resumes and applications for at least six months. The rejection letters started to pile up as did my stress level. Even after countless phone calls and interviews, I remained jobless. When I was still in school, I imagined I would get several offers and my biggest problem would be deciding which one to accept, but as it turns out, reality didn’t see fit to allow that to happen. Even worse, I was at that low point in life where I was out of money and options, which meant I was faced with the very real possibility of having to move back in with my parents. There are worse things in life when you are 25, but not many. 

This isn’t the position I interviewed for, but they called me in a panic when a teacher quit suddenly and offered me the job, effective immediately. Seeing that I was about one day away from calling my parents to break the news about both my lack of money and employment to them, I was more than overjoyed and readily accepted. Everything happened so quickly after that. Within days, I was back to Manchester and searching for a place to live. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, or money for that matter, to be too picky, but I was excited when I found a furnished one bedroom apartment within walking distance to the campus. It was small, but there was a balcony with enough room for all of the plants I would be dragging along with me. Plus, I didn’t know anyone else here, so it’s not like I needed to worry about space for having company over.

A few after that, I had my car packed up with my meager belongings and was on my way to my first actual adult apartment and job. 

And now here I am, the day before my first day, poking through my hastily assigned office. My new boss apologized profusely for the state of it, but honestly, it seems pretty great to me. Bookshelves line two of the walls and are already packed full of books. The person in the position before mine had left most of them behind when she left, but she had pretty decent taste so I was more than happy to have an almost endless supply of reading material. 

I brought a few framed posters along to hang up so it feels a little more like I actually belong here, but oddly enough, it already feels that way. Maybe it’s the excitement, maybe it’s living someplace new, or maybe it’s because I’m finally where I’m supposed to be. I can’t even remember the last time I felt like this. The only thing missing in here is a few houseplants and maybe a cactus or two.

My office is probably as good as I’m going to get it for now, so I should probably head back to my apartment. With one last look around, I exit the mostly vacant English building. 

I took a long walk on campus yesterday trying to take it all in. It really is beautiful here. The buildings are all so old and historical, not like the dull, boring things you see built now. I immediately feel at home in the English building, with its marble and stone architecture. My small office should feel crowded and small, but somehow it still has its charm. I also figured out that my new apartment is even closer to campus than I previously thought. If I cut through a parking lot and the big grassy area by one of the dorms, I’m guessing it should take me less than 15 minutes to get here in the mornings.

I even made it over to the dorms to take a look. It must have been move-in day because there was a huge crowd of people and cars. I stood there watching the kids haul all of their stuff around and started to feel quite nostalgic. This is my first time on a college campus as a teacher instead of a student. Part of me wants to go back and relive this part of my life. I almost miss those little, cramped dorm rooms and twin beds that I was always a bit too tall to sleep on. 

Now on my way back home by taking my newly discovered shortcut, I find myself walking past the same dorm, but it’s much quieter today than yesterday. All of the students must be moved in by now. The sun is starting to go down so I imagine they’ve spent at least part of their day getting ready for tomorrow just as I did. I wonder if any of them are as nervous as I am. Maybe, but not likely.

There are a few people still walking through the paths around the dorms, but what catches my eye for some reason, is a tall boy laying down by himself under a small grouping of trees. He’s on his back with his hands behind his head and either has his eyes closed or is staring up into the branches and leaves high above him. In the low light of dusk, I can't make out his features other than a mop of wavy brown hair. I don’t know why I’m so intrigued by something as simple as this, but I’m finding myself curious about why he’s out here alone in the first place. I consider walking over and saying hello, but I’m guessing that approaching a random stranger when it’s almost dark probably qualifies as creepy so I continue on my way home.

Once there, I have my standard bachelor dinner which consists of a bowl of cereal and a Ribena. Now that I have an adult job and adult apartment, I should probably also learn how to cook actual food. Although I guess there really isn’t anything wrong with cereal, I think to myself as I read the side of the box about all of the vitamins and minerals that seem to be crammed into each serving. It’s practically health food!

I flick the tv on and start looking through Netflix. Why did they have to take Buffy off? That’s exactly what I need to get my mind off of tomorrow. I know I have the DVDs somewhere in here, but I don’t have the energy or the patience to dig through any more cardboard packing boxes this weekend. Buffy would just have to wait. So instead, I reluctantly drag myself off of the couch and into my bedroom to pick out an outfit for the first day of school. My judgment isn't the best in the early mornings, so I usually try to sort this out the night before.

While I’m shuffling through the clothes in my closet, my mind goes back to the boy dressed in black by himself underneath the trees, but I don’t understand why. It’s not like spotting someone around his age on a college campus is unusual. There are thousands of students here. He didn’t appear any different from the rest, but yet somehow he was. 

Maybe he drew my attention because he seemed so solitary. As much as I love my job and new apartment, the solitude is starting to feel a bit more like loneliness. Was he lonely too? I don’t know anyone beyond just making small talk with a few of the other teachers, but of course, I’ve only been here a few days. Plus, I feel like I relate more to the students, who just happen to be only a few years younger than I am, as opposed to the older professors who are mostly married people with families. How do I even make friends as an adult? It was so much easier in the dorms. You were constantly surrounded by potential friends and very rarely ever alone. 

But here I am. Sitting by myself in a brand new town, in an apartment still filled with cardboard boxes, and with a job I’m probably slightly underqualified for. I'm surrounded by people but still feel alone. Maybe I have more in common with that boy that I want to admit.

*****

I feel so small sitting here behind this desk, almost like an imposter. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone yelled at me to get out so the real teacher can have their office back. My nerves are back full force as I watch groups of students, walk past my door. Oh god. This just confirms that I should be out there with them, not in here!

As I’m halfway considering coming up with an escape plan, a booming voice interrupts my thoughts.

“Phil! It’s wonderful to see you again! I see you haven’t changed your mind?” 

I look up to find a kind and thankfully familiar face standing in my doorway. I immediately jump up and cross the small room to shake his hand.

“Dr. Anderson, good morning! I’m so glad you’re here. I was going to find you later and thank you again for this opportunity!”

“Please, call me Robert. Actually, thank you for agreeing to join us on such short notice. We’re all very excited to have you here! Now, is there anything else you need before you get started?”

“No, I think I’m ok.”

“Good! Well, I'll let you finish getting settled since it’s almost time for your first class. Good luck!”

“Thank you,” I call after him as he leaves. He’s right though. It’s almost time. I can already feel the butterflies starting to fill my stomach and the doubt beginning to creep in. What if this is a huge mistake? What if I’m terrible at this or my coworkers all hate me? What if I’m not smart enough? I try to shake away the negative thoughts as I gather up a notepad, a thick textbook, a few pens, and venture out into the hallway, closing my office door behind me. 

After walking down to the end of the hall, I double check the number above the classroom door before I walk in and lay my things on the desk in the front of the room. I take a deep breath and look up, finding twenty sets of eyes peering back at me. After a whirlwind two weeks, it’s finally here. Today is the day.

“Good morning, everyone! I’m Mr. Lester and I’m going to be your Contemporary Literature instructor this semester!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek!! We're getting so close!


	11. Chapter 11

**Dan POV**

It has been precisely two hundred and thirty-eight days since he left. I’ve counted off every endless day, waiting for the moment when I could stop keeping track.

I watch, entirely frozen in place, as his eyes flicker from person to person while he talks about what we’re going to be doing in class this semester. When his blue eyes finally reach me, I hold my breath, waiting to see if he reacts at all. They linger for a few seconds before continuing on. I exhale and am immediately overwhelmed with a mixture of elation and fear. 

He looks almost the same as he did when I saw him for the first time a year ago. The black fringe that hangs down over his forehead may be a bit longer, and he wears glasses now, but his pale ivory skin and blue eyes have remained the same. I think back to our last night together and wonder if his skin still feels as soft.

Glasses. Just like the man I saw from my window on move-in day. It dawns on me that the tall stranger I saw outside the dorms two days ago wasn’t a stranger after all. He had been right there and I missed him by mere minutes. My chest tightens knowing that if I had just been a little quicker, we would have found each other two days sooner. When each day feels like a lifetime, two days make a huge difference.

Someone a few desks down asks a question and he laughs before starting to joke back and forth with the blonde haired boy in my row. I’m shocked to feel a spark of jealousy because Phil is this focused and engaged with someone that isn’t me.

My gaze never leaves him as he starts to walk up and down the rows of desks, handing out the class syllabus while alternately talking more about what to expect in the class and asking students questions. As he turns and starts his slow walk up the row I’m sitting in, something strange starts to happen. The closer he gets, memories begin piling up in my head faster than they ever have before. Being in the bookstore, waking up next to him in my bed, all of it. They’re all so intense and vivid, that as each one bubbles up and crashes over me, it makes me feel like it all just happened yesterday. It’s all so real that it takes every ounce of willpower I have not to jump up out of my seat, throw my arms around him and beg him to remember. Is it happening to him too? Can he feel or see any of this?

My breath hitches as he stops just in front of my desk. He looks down at me and I’m instantly held in place by his pale blue eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Dan,” I barely choke out. 

“Ok, Dan,” he starts cheerfully. “Who is your favorite contemporary writer?”

Considering I could barely remember my own name, I’m grateful that he at least asked a straightforward question that I don’t have to think about.

“Douglas Coupland.” 

“Oh!” he says happily. “That’s my favorite too!”

Luckily, I catch myself before I say ‘I know.’ He’s beaming at me and it takes me a second before I realize that I have a huge smile plastered across my face. I’m sure I have hearts in my eyes right now as I still stubbornly refuse to tear my gaze from him as he starts to work his way around the room again. 

“Well, I think we’re done here for the day,” he says. “I’ll see you back here first thing on Wednesday!”

Wait. What? No. I don’t want to leave the classroom and I definitely don’t want to wait two days to see him again. I never want to let him out of my sight. I check the time and sure enough, an hour has somehow slid by. I take my time collecting my papers and tucking them into my backpack. Leaning down to tie a shoelace that isn’t actually untied, I sneak looks at him out of the corner of my eye. Out of excuses to stay, I reluctantly make my way out to the hallway when it seems that he isn’t going to be leaving the classroom anytime soon.

I have an hour to kill before my next class, so I meander down the hallway until I slump down onto a bench, not quite sure what to do now. I fish the class syllabus out of my backpack and let my eyes wander over the list of books, discussion topics, and homework assignments. Suddenly, I spot what I need. Down at the bottom of the page, he has his email, phone number, and office number listed. 

Office 132. I cram the paper back into my bag and take off down the hallway, counting down the numbers on the doors as I go. When I finally reach it, I just stand there staring at the number. Now that I’m here, I have no idea what to do. He never left the classroom, so it’s safe to say he’s not in here. Do I wait for him? Do I just lurk around? What would I even say to him? I need more time to think before I actually talk to him.

Looking around the nearly empty hallway, I reach out and place my hand on the doorknob. As I turn it to the left, I’m surprised when I hear a click and the door easily swings inward. Somewhere inside my head, there is a voice warning me to close the door and walk away, but there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to listen to it now. I step into the room, leaving the door cracked open behind me.

Phil’s office. I stand in the middle of the room, slowly turning in a circle as I take it all in. There are framed posters on the walls of his favorite bands and a cacti and a plant balanced on the window ledge. I look at the books on the bookshelf and although some of them I’ve never heard of, others are definitely things that Phil would read. He doesn’t just look the same, he is the same. All of this. These are all things Phil liked, and now he’s alive again and gets them back.

“Oh! Hello!”

I stifle a yell as I turn around and come face to face with Phil. My heart is pounding and I feel dizzy, but Phil looks perfectly happy to find a student standing alone in the middle of his office even though his door was closed.

“Dan, right?”

“What? Oh…I mean, yeah. My name is Dan.” I stand frozen as he walks around me and puts his things down on his desk. “I’m sorry about this. About being in your office. I mean, just coming in when you weren’t here.” I stumble. “I have a break before my next class and…ummm…”

“That’s ok, I don’t mind at all. I actually have an hour before I have to teach again. In fact, I’m sort of glad to find you here.”

“You are?” I’m trying not to look as surprised as I feel right now, but probably failing miserably. 

“Well, this is my first day and I don’t really know anyone yet. You get to be my first friend, Dan,” he says before giving me a big smile. “Actually, I’m thrilled it’s you because we already have a lot to talk about.”

“We do?” I feel like I’m getting ready to pass out, so I quickly sit down in one of his guest chairs. He couldn’t possibly remember already, could he? 

“Yes, we have the same favorite writer!”

“Right. Same writer. Of course.”

“Are you ok, Dan? You look a little shaky. Do you have first day of school nerves? I felt the same way this morning.”

“Um, yeah. I think that’s what it is.”

“Here,” he says, fishing a bottle of water out of his mini fridge. 

With a shaking hand, I reach out and take it from him, brushing our fingers together in the process. Our eyes lock and he tilts his head and stares silently back at me. 

“I like your cactus,” I finally blurt out, breaking the silence. Where did that even come from? I like your cactus? Phil, however, doesn’t seem to even notice that I’m drowning in a pool of awkwardness right in front of him. 

“Thank you! I usually name them, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Any ideas?” 

I look back and forth between the stout little cactus and Phil’s hopeful eyes and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Jake. It sort of looks like a Jake.” His face immediately lights up and my heart swells.

“That’s actually a great idea! There’s a character in one of my favorite shows named Jake.”

“Adventure Time?” 

“Yes!” he says excitedly. “You watch that too?”

I can only smile and give him a small nod as I think back to his bright yellow Jake the Dog sweatshirt. 

It suddenly occurs to me that just because I saw him for the first time two days ago, doesn’t mean he’s only been here for two days. What if he’s been here all summer? Or even longer?

“So, have you been in Manchester long?” I ask, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Well, I interviewed for a teaching assistant position, but they gave the job to someone else. About two weeks ago, one of the teachers had to quit due to health issues suddenly, and they didn’t have anyone who could take her classes. I was their second choice for the original assistant position, so they ended up offering it to me. I hadn’t found a job yet, so my guess it had as much to do with that as it did with me.”

“Do you like it so far?” 

“I do! I’ve only been here twice before, once for the interview and once about a week or so ago when I came here trying to find an apartment at the last minute. I was actually really lucky! I found a great little place close to here that had surprisingly affordable rent. I couldn’t believe I got something so perfect that close to the start of the school year!” 

As he’s talking, he pushes his fringe back off his forehead. It ends up in a messy quiff and I can feel my hands start to shake. Between the hair and the glasses, I can barely focus long enough to speak. 

“That’s a lot of coincidences,” I say, my mouth going dry, knowing that ‘coincidence’ probably isn’t the right word for all of those highly unlikely things falling into place. 

We start an easy conversation back and forth about favorite books and graphic novels and I almost forget why I’m here in the first place. How do I make him remember? Clearly I can’t just remind him that he had a whole other life, haunted me while he was dead, and then came back so we could be together. There’s no way for me to make that not sound insane.

“Wait, what time is it?” he asks suddenly. We look up at the clock and then both jump out of our seats. 

“I think we just made each other late for our next classes,” he jokes as he scoops his things up for his 11:00 class. “Maybe we can talk more later this week?”

“Yes! I- I would like that,” I answer. We leave his office and he takes off down the hall, glancing back at me after a few steps and smiling. I stand there staring after him for a minute before I remember that I have somewhere I need to be too. I have no idea what my next step is going to be, but I need to figure out something fast. 

I walk quickly to my next class, knowing that I’m just going to be going through the motions. My head and heart are so full of Phil that I can’t possibly make room for anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the irregular updates....totally wasn't planning on this story being this long! 
> 
> How does everyone like it so far???


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long since I've put out a chapter that I'm guessing my readers are gone! I'm trying to sloooooly dig myself out of a horrible case of writer's block. The next chapter is already partially written so you won't have a long wait this time...I promise!!

Chapter 12

Phil POV

My first day teaching flies by and before I know it, my classes are over. Since it’s the beginning of the year and there are no assignments to grade, I debate what to do with the excess time that I seem to have on my hands. In general, I’m pretty content to be by myself and don’t require a lot of social contact, but right now I’m half hoping that one of the other teachers stops by to introduce themselves and have a chat. I peek out of my office door, but it looks like the day has already wound down and there are only a few students left wandering around the near empty hallways. Stalling to avoid going home to an apartment that doesn't feel enough like home yet, I start browsing through the books left behind by the previous English instructor. 

I run my fingertips along the spines, enjoying the comforting feeling of the hardback and paperback volumes. While the rest of the world embraced digital books, I’ve resisted so far and stuck to my regular trips to the library and local bookstores. The soothing effects of holding the books in my hands have far outweighed the convenience of digital downloads. 

I start to pull out the volumes, one at a time, some familiar and others new to me. My eye catches a title so familiar that I can’t help but smile. I brush the dust off of the well-worn cover and feel a wave of nostalgia for the long-missing copy that I once had. It looks like it’s been well loved by someone, which somehow makes me even happier, so I add Tokyo Ghoul to the quickly growing stack of books on my desk. 

My thoughts start to drift away from the books and return to my classes. Overall, it was a pretty good day. My biggest fear that the students wouldn’t respect me because of my inexperience seemed to have remained unfounded. Some were attentive, others looked slightly bored and perhaps a little hungover, but only about six months out of college myself, I easily related to all of those feelings. And just as when I was a student, it seems that Contemporary Literature is still going to be my favorite class. 

I resist for as long as I can before I snap open the laptop sitting on my desk and log into the school’s computer systems. I had been given a brief training session on how to navigate them, but I still stumble through until I finally find the one I’m looking for. After typing out each letter with deliberate slowness, I click the enter button.

Dan’s deep brown eyes stare back at me from the ID photo in his student file. He looks a little scared and a bit younger, but with his soft curly hair and dimple, there’s no doubt that it is him. It’s so rare I find anyone that I connect with, but there is something about this boy.

But what?

I glance up at the door before I dig a little deeper into the file. He’s a junior and is 21. I look at his class schedule and realize he must be an English major just like I was. Maybe a shared love of books and language, including having the same favorite author, is why I feel so drawn to him. 

Is it a conflict of interest to be friends with a student? That’s such a slippery slope, especially when the teachers and students are so close to the same age. I think back to instances when I was in college where students and professors had crossed that very narrow line, sometimes to disastrous results. 

I snap my computer shut and shake the thoughts out of my head. Clearly, I’m just being ridiculous and overthinking the entire situation. A good teacher gets to know their students and is always open if they want to talk or need help with any issues, academic or otherwise. Why does my brain always immediately go to the worst case scenario? My connection with Dan has to do with the fact that the conversation we had earlier today was the first real social contact I’ve had since moving to Manchester. As usual, I’m creating a problem when there isn’t one to begin with.

I put my laptop in my bag along with as many books from my stack that will fit. Picking up the rest, I start my walk home, determined to stop making something out of nothing. In fact, I should be celebrating today instead of trying to analyze a simple interaction with a student. This is what I’ve wanted to do for my entire life and I’m finally here! As I take my shortcut through campus, I take a deep breath of fresh fall air and try to truly enjoy the experience. I’m a teacher and today was my first day of school. 

My pep talk lifts my mood as I walk past the dorms. For some reason I can’t quite explain, I feel such a sense of peace come over me on this stretch of the way home. There is just something about the big brick building, perfect green lawn, and small grove of trees. I slow my pace a little bit and enjoy the sound of music and laughter coming from many of the open windows. I shove down the feelings that are bubbling up and I hurry the entire rest of the way home, hoping to outrun them. 

As soon as I open the door of my apartment, I start my internal pep talk all over again with little success. The rest of my evening is spent doing busy work to keep my head occupied. I make a simple dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread. I think you’re supposed to drink wine with pasta, but the only thing I have is Ribena, which is plenty close enough. Dinner is followed by unpacking more of my worn cardboard boxes and sifting through mounds of video games and books. 

Eventually, I run out of boxes so I stand in the middle of my apartment and do a small turn, somewhat depressed that I can see almost every corner of my new home from this spot. Even though I’m not tired, I decide just to call it a day and go to bed, but then groan when I realize that it’s only 8:00. Why does it seem like it should be so much later? 

I feel a pang of loneliness as I stare at my neatly made but very empty bed. After briefly debating, I grab the blue checked comforter and a pillow before heading to the living room and plop it all onto the couch. This place still feels foreign enough that I’m craving something familiar. 

I unzip my back and start pulling the books out until I find the one I’m looking for. Once the blankets are arranged, I click on the small side light and settle in on the couch with the remote control and the book. 

A wave of nostalgia washes over me as Buffy fills the screen and the worn cover of Tokyo Ghoul stares up at me. I think I could recite the book from memory, but there is something about the comforting feeling I get when rereading it that I need so much right now. Snuggling deeper into my comforter, I open the book. But before I can even start, an envelope slips out from between the pages and lands on my lap.

Frowning, I pick it up and examine the plain sealed envelope. I slip my finger underneath the flap and carefully tear it open. I pull out an unremarkable piece of white paper and unfold it. There are only three lines of text and a date, but it is enough to make my breath hitch. 

Alone in the dimly lit room, the sound of the tv fades away until there is just me and the hastily scribbled words on the piece of paper:

Dan Howell  
room 315  
Brauer Hall Dormitory

At the top, the page is dated. Exactly a year ago today.

My heart speeds up and I start to feel sweaty, but I have no idea why. It’s just a piece of paper in an envelope. My thoughts kick into overdrive and the questions are coming far quicker than any answers. Was this why he was in my office? To put a note in one of the books? But why not just put it on my desk if he wanted me to find it? Something didn’t feel right about this scenario.

Wait, when I picked the book up off the shelf, I had to brush the dust off. It couldn’t have been touched in at least a year. Dan couldn’t have put the envelope in the book today because the dust would have been brushed off when he picked it up. 

But then why was he in my office? I thought it was to talk about the class, but was it something more than that? How can this be? Finding the envelope and him being in my office have to be connected in some way, but how since the note has clearly been in there for quite some time? It’s too strange to just be a coincidence. 

Knowing that sleep will never find me tonight, I stare at the paper and read the words over and over again until they are firmly imprinted in my brain, trying to find sense when there is none.


	13. Chapter 13

**Dan POV**

I can feel it in my head again, a strange rustling like blowing fall leaves. I’m no stranger to unwanted feelings, but this is something new. The paranoia, depression, and anxiety that have always plagued me are strangely familiar and comforting, if only in their familiarity. They’ve brought darkness into my life, but at least I understand how they work. They very rarely bring any surprises with them. 

Is this something new? Some sort of ominous sign of yet another mental issue preparing to show itself? My brain speeds ahead into a world of ‘what-ifs,’ picturing a new cycle of doctors, tests, and pills. I’m already anticipating what side effects will plague me before I shake my head and try to talk myself out of jumping into the downward spiral. 

Just because my head feels weird, doesn’t mean that I’m sick. With the excitement of finding Phil, came emotions and stress that I wasn’t expecting, along with knowing that I’m going to have to make some decisions on how to handle it. I close my eyes and take deep cleansing breaths while trying to push away the intrusive thoughts. It’s also a reappearance of the big black abyss that always threatens to swallow me whole. 

Yesterday and today drug along mercilessly slow. After leaving Phil’s office, I spent the rest of the day pouring over the syllabus he gave us. There was nothing unusual about it, just a list of books, assignments, and dates, but he had written it. These were his words from his brain. Finally, something real to hold onto again. 

My class with him meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, which means I spent almost the entire day today agonizing on what would happen tomorrow. Thankfully, evening is finally here, and it’s nearly an acceptable time for me to go to bed and pray for sleep that I’m probably not going to be able to find. 

***

I sit in the hard classroom chair, shifting around every few seconds. Even after a short and fitful sleep last night, I’m wide awake. My eyes are locked onto the clock in front of the classroom, watching the second hand make lazy revolutions, willing it to speed up. Early classes aren’t my strong suit, but due to the fact I couldn’t sleep last night, I was here and in my spot at 8:40 am, ridiculously early for a 9:00 am class. I had wandered up and down the hall a few times, hoping to run into Phil as he was getting in, but I never saw him. 

8:55….8:56….8:57…8:58….8:59….9:00….9:01….9:02….

I start to squirm around in my seat again, jostling the table hard enough that a few classmates turn and look at me. I shoot them an apologetic look and shrug. 

Why is he late? Did he oversleep maybe? Or was it something more. Every minute that passes without him being here sends me a little closer to the edge. 

“Hello, everyone. Sorry I’m late this morning.”

My eyes shoot up towards the sound of his voice and relief washes over me, but once I get a good look at him, the worry returns. Dark circles mar his perfect pale skin under his eyes. His black hair is ruffled and sticking up at odd angles. Even his clothes look like he might have slept in them. He glances around the room before his eyes settle on me for the briefest second as a flash of something crosses his face resulting in a pained expression. 

Something is wrong. Something must have happened to make him act like this. Does he remember? 

He has to know, right? What else could it possibly be? I try to think about what I’m going to say to him. He’s got to be feeling confused and scared. I’ll just go into his office after class and see how much he remembers and then I can try to fill in the holes. This could finally be it! The night where he remembers. I close my eyes and allow the daydreams I’ve had over the past year filter into my consciousness. 

I suddenly freeze. Along with the good memories, comes a scenario I hadn’t thought of until now. What if Phil remembers, but doesn’t want to be with me?

No no no. That can’t be possible. That’s not how this is supposed to go. I’m supposed to find Phil and get him to remember and then we live happily ever after. Right? This is supposed to be the easy part, but I’ve got so many questions and no good answers.

I think back to the strange mental connection we used to have and wonder if any of it is left. Shifting forward in my seat, I stare at him intently. I concentrate on every word he says and each movement he makes, willing him to look at me again. My eyes close and try to pull up all of the memories from the few short days we spent together. They pour back in almost startling clarity, overwhelming my emotions. I finally open my eyes again, sure that he must feel something, but he’s still at the front of the room, pacing back and forth in the front of the class, oblivious to my efforts.

He never looks directly at any of us again, only glancing briefly in our direction a few times, but mostly staring off into the distance as he lectures. I take half-hearted notes for the next hour, barely hearing any of his words. Before I know it, my drifting thoughts are interrupted by the shuffling around of my classmates and the scrape of chairs as they pack their things up to leave. Bewildered, I glance frantically around the room but panic when I realize he’s already gone.

I cram my things into my backpack and try to scramble out of the classroom as fast as I can, but Phil is quicker. I lose sight of him as I try to push my way through the crowd of slow moving students. When I finally make my way out of the classroom, I frantically look up and down the hallway for his tall form and dark hair, but don’t see him anywhere. I weave in and out of people loitering in the hallway and rush towards his office, only to find the door closed. Tentatively, I reach out and twist the doorknob, but it won’t budge. 

The thought of not seeing him again until next Monday makes my stomach twist. That isn’t an option, but not having a viable plan, I plop down in the hallway outside of his office and wait. At first, I jump every time I hear a deep baritone voice, hoping that it’s him. But as time goes by, my hope wanes, and after almost an hour has passed, I get up and go to my next class. 

When it’s over, I practically sprint back to the English building, but my hopes are crushed when his door is still tightly shut and locked. With nothing left to do, I trudge back to my dorm. Thankfully, the halls are pretty empty right now, so I’m able to make it from the elevator to my room without anyone spotting me. The last thing I need right now is someone trying to make small talk.

Once safely in my room, I flop onto my bed and rub my fists into my eyes until I see stars. I try to do what my therapist advised and look for a silver lining. After wracking my brain, the only thing I can come up with is that I have five days to come up with a spectacular plan, which really doesn’t provide any comfort at all. I briefly consider trying to find out where he lives, but decide that’s a little on the creepy side. If he did remember something and that’s why he’s skittish, showing up on his doorstep won’t help. 

I have to concentrate on why I’m actually going through all of this. This is for Phil. This is for us. These past few days have not unfolded how I thought they would go, but I have to accept the reality of the situation. I’ve spent the last year daydreaming about what it would be like when we were together again. I manufactured an entire fairy tale ending to our already improbable situation. It’s unreasonable to think that real life would ever imitate the world I created in my head. 

I yawn and stare out of my window, thankful for the sleepy feeling finally blanketing me. The stress of the situation is starting to take a very high toll on my mental state. If I can just shut off my brain for a little bit, maybe everything will be alright.

***

“Dan!”

The sound of my name is immediately followed by an insistent knock on my door. 

“We know you’re in there. Open the door!” I hear the door handle being jiggled before there’s another knock. 

I say nothing and the shouting, jiggling, and knocking repeat themselves over and over again. This is one of those things that won’t go away no matter how long you ignore it. I stand up long enough to unlock and open the door to Leah and Annie before I throw myself back onto my bed.

“Dan?” Leah asks. “Is everything ok?”

“No,” I say plainly before I roll over, so my face is buried in a pillow.

“It’s only the third day of school. How could it be that bad already?”

I peek up and see Annie anxiously looking over Leah’s shoulder at me. 

“You have no idea,” I mumble as I turn back into the pillow.

“Do you want to come down to dinner with us?”

Dinner? I sit up and tilt my head towards the window and am surprised to see that the sun is low in the sky already. I must have fallen asleep.

“Want us to bring something back up for you?” They must have assumed my non-answer was a no. My grumbling stomach, however, reminds me that they’re just trying to help.

“Yeah, I guess. A few slices of pizza?”

“Ok,” Leah answers.

“Dan,” Annie says, pushing her way into the room. “Maybe you should just talk about whatever is bothering you.”

“I can’t do this right now, Annie.”

“But Dan – “

“Please! I just need to be alone to think!” I wince, knowing that sounded harsher than I meant it. She turns and flounces out the door.

“Leah, I’m sorry….I just….”

“I know,” she says softly. “It’s ok. We’ll be back in a bit with food, ok?”

“Thank you,” I nod, grateful when I hear the door click shut. I make a mental note to apologize. I know she’s only trying to help, plus, her persistent friendship has gotten me through a lot of hard times this past year. 

Just as I lie back down in bed, there’s another knock at the door and my annoyance flares back up again.

“Go away!” I shout.

After a brief pause, the knock returns. I groan and stomp over to the door, flinging it open.

“I told you I didn’t…..” My anger is instantly gone, and all of the air rushes out of my lungs. In the place of my friends, I find Phil standing in my doorway. He looks slightly more put together than he did this morning in class, his hair smoothed back in a quif and the purple under his eyes has faded but not entirely disappeared. The look on his face, however, reveals the turbulence behind those perfect blue eyes. 

“You’re here,” I finally stammer.

“I am. I’m hoping you can tell me why,” he asks, holding up a piece of paper.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally another chapter! Hopefully better late than never! ;)

Phil POV

 

I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen after I knocked on Dan’s dorm room door. To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. What I do know, however, was I wasn’t expecting the reaction I’m getting from him now.

A look of pure and utter shock is plastered across his face. I watch him curiously, as he stands frozen in the doorway, not even blinking or making a sound. I was surprised and confused to find the letter tucked away in that book in my office, but his reaction to that same piece of paper I’m now holding up between us is somewhere between fascination and horror. His haunted gaze moves away from my face and fixates on the paper. Slowly, he raises his hand and touches it with his fingertips, almost as if he’s making sure it’s real.

I can hear people behind me in the hallway, so I start to feel a little nervous. It probably wouldn’t look proper for students to find a professor hanging out in the dorms with one of his students. I figured we would probably go in his room and talk, but here we are still silently standing in the hallway, unmoving.

“Dan?” I ask calmly. Any desire I once had to confront him, had quickly dissolved away into concern. His eyes flicker back to mine, and he takes a step back into his room. “Can I come in?” I ask softly. He looks around his room with a confused look, almost as if he’s never seen it before and has no idea how he got here. 

I cautiously take a few steps into the room until I have enough space to close the door behind me. The sound of the door clicking shut seems to snap him out of his stupor enough that he stumbles backward until he’s left standing in the center of his room, his eyes never leaving me once.

Under his stare, I start to walk around slowly, the piece of paper forgotten in my hand. Something familiar tugs at my heart as I take in our surroundings. It feels like I’ve sunk backward in time somehow. I chalk it up to a combination of loneliness and nostalgia for my university days that weren’t so very long ago, but this is different. Something familiar, but unknown at the same time. There’s a pull here that I don’t understand.

Momentarily forgetting about Dan and why I’m here, I reach out and touch things as I go. The weird cement blocks that make up the walls of dorm rooms. The rickety fake wood desks and bookshelves. The flat and worn industrial strength carpet on the floor. The overhead fluorescent lighting that gives everything a slightly yellow glow. 

I circle around again and end up facing the overloaded bookshelves. I read title after title, and it hits me how similar our tastes are. But not just the books, the posters on the wall, the gaming consoles and games stacked up by the small tv. It’s far more than just familiar. It feels like I’ve been here before and am just now remembering it.

Wandering over to the window, I lean against the frame and look out at the large grassy lawn below that stretches all the way to the stone and brick academic buildings. My eyes eventually land on a small grouping of trees just a short walk from the dorm and I lean in closer until my forehead touches the glass.

Those trees. The same ones I walked past on the way home the evening before the first day of school. A memory bubbles to the surface and I suck in a quick breath of air as the recollection solidifies in my head. 

“Dan?” I ask, finally turning to face him. “Were you laying under those trees a few nights ago? I walk past here on the way home and I saw someone down there. Was it you?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I just wanted some time alone to think.”

“What were you thinking about?” 

Silence.

“Phil,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. “Do you remember when we met?”

I frown slightly, thrown by the change of subject and not understanding why he’s asking. His deep brown eyes are staring at me intently.

“The first day of class, but we didn't actually talk until we were in my office afterward.” I watch as Dan turns his head and chews on his bottom lip. “Well, I guess I saw you before that. Under the trees, but I suppose you can’t say that we met that night.”

“No,” he says, looking disappointed.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “We met before that?” 

“Yes,” he answers hesitantly.

“Really? Where?” I almost feel relieved. If we’ve met before, that explains why I’m so drawn to him. It’s just familiarity and nothing more. 

“Just…think. Think back.”

“To when? I don’t understand, Dan.”

The disappointment on Dan's face is answer enough. I desperately want to give him whatever answer he's looking for, whether or not it's the truth. He looks away and sits down on the edge of his bed, his hands twisting together in his lap. For some reason, despite my better judgment, I need to be closer to him. I can’t stand to see him in pain like this and not try to do something to help, so I walk over and sit down next to him. As soon as my weight sinks down onto the mattress, he lets out a stifled sob and a few tears run down his cheeks.

I can’t explain why the pain he is feeling is flowing through my body. Every tear and sniffle has a physical effect on me. Even without a single touch or knowing glance between us, I know that I crossed that line between teacher and student as soon as I decided to come to his dorm room. What he feels, I feel. That means far more than any physical relationship.

“Dan? Please talk to me. I want to help. Did I say something wrong?”

He shakes his head from side to side while he swipes the tears off of his cheeks with the sleeves of his hoodie. As we sit in silence, he carefully reaches over and tugs the now forgotten and wrinkled piece of paper from my hand. He smiles at it sadly and smooths his hand over it, trying to flatten out the folds.

That paper, which caused me to lose so much sleep, now seems meaningless compared to the pain that Dan is experiencing. I have this overwhelming need to fix it, but I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. 

“Do you know where that came from?” I ask cautiously, not wanting to make things worse.

“Yes,” he answers through the tears. I wait for him to expound on his one-word answer, but am only given silence. 

“Can you tell me what it means?” 

The question makes his eyes grow huge and he turns his body so he’s facing away from me. I sense his panic and back off a bit and try another angle.

“Did you put this in my office the other day? Is that what you were doing before I got there?”

“No.”

His answer surprises me. I’ve wracked my brain since I found it and can’t figure out any other way for it to end up in that book, especially since it was already there when I moved into the office.

“But you do know how it got there?”

His body freezes for a second before he nods slightly.

“Dan, I don’t understand any of this. Please talk to me!”

Dan goes silent once again. 

“Do you trust me?” he finally asks. “Will you do something for me?”

I stare back into his eyes, which are now locked onto mine. Without hesitation, I know there is only one way to answer his question.

“Anything.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been way too long without an update!! I couldn't figure out for the life of me how I wanted the story to wrap up. This was originally supposed to be a short story, but as it grew, I became less sure of the ending. I think I've got it, so here we go again!

Dan POV

It’s noon on Saturday and I’m standing in front of Phil’s apartment door. This is happening. This is going to work. I firmly knock on the door, knowing it sounds far more confident than I feel. The door opens and my heart speeds up. It’s been three days since he agreed to meet me today, but it feels like it’s been forever. Is it always going to feel like this?

“Hello,” he says almost shyly before breaking eye contact and looking down at his feet. I briefly wonder if he has been counting down the hours until today too.

“Thank you for doing this. And you sure you’re ok with it?” 

“I mean, I guess, but then again I don’t exactly know what we’re going to be doing, do I?” he answers with a wry smile.

“I know. Thank you for trusting me.”

I shuffle out of the way so Phil can shut and lock the door behind him. We walk down the sidewalk in comfortable silence, heading to the center of the small college town. I had planned a whole list of subjects we could talk about in case there was an awkward silence, but it turns out I had been worried for nothing. Just like when we were together before, the conversation comes easily and the number of things we have in common just continues to grow. 

In fact, instead of taking the direct route, I veer off course and take the long way so I can steal away a few more minutes with him. 

“Dan?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really confused,” he says. “I don’t understand all of this.”

“I know. This might help you figure some things out, ok?”

When he doesn’t answer, I glance over at him and see him nod a wordless response. 

As we continue to walk and the sidewalks become crowded with Saturday shoppers, I notice that he’s looking around nervously. I know he’s scanning the crowd to see any familiar faces, other faculty or students who might question why the two of us were going somewhere together in a non-school situation. It’s just another reminder that things aren’t as they were before and I prayed we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew from school. Being questioned about what we were doing with each other could only make things more complicated.

When we get to the bookstore, I pull the door open for him, but he just gives me a confused look.

“The bookstore?”

I fake my best smile at him as he walks in with me close behind. I immediately head for the steps leading upstairs to the non-fiction section and he dutifully follows without complaint. But now that we’re actually here, I’m not sure what I’m even going to do. I’m already losing faith in my plan. Why did I think this would work?

“Now what?” he asks, peering around the huge room. 

“Find a book.”

He immediately starts laughing. “Dan, it’s a bookstore. We’re surrounded by books.”

I can feel my cheeks start to burn pink. “Ok…ummm…just walk around. What would you normally do? Pretend I’m not here.”

His blue eyes fixate on me for a few seconds and I’m completely mesmerized. I can’t tell if he’s going to do as I ask or just laugh again and leave. 

Thankfully, he starts to wander towards the bookshelves. This time it’s me who is following him, waiting and holding my breath, seeing where he is going to go. He peeks down each aisle, searching. Finally, he spots what he’s looking for and heads in that direction. I speed up my pace, desperately needing to see what he’s going to do next. 

Just as he did on our last trip, he stops in the plant and gardening section and I’m pretty sure my heart is beating loud enough for everyone in the bookstore to hear it. He runs his fingers over the spines of the books until he pulls out a large book and starts flipping through it. I approach him slowly, but he’s so quickly engrossed in the book that he doesn’t notice how close I’m standing to him. 

“You like cacti,” I say.

“I do. Wait, how do you know that?”

I don’t answer, but shuffle cautiously closer to him. His eyes flicker over my face like he’s trying to decide what to do next. If I could will him to remember me, it would have happened at that exact moment. 

“Mr. Lester!”

Without thinking, I push past him and around the shelves to the next aisle, leaving Phil standing alone with a horrified expression on his face. I lean against the shelf, panicked frozen in place, straining to hear what’s happening. 

I can hear a girl’s cheerful voice chattering on and on about a class assignment. Was she in my class? Did she see us together? I’m guessing she can’t tell anything is amiss, but I can hear the strain in Phil’s low voice as he answers her. A few minutes into the conversation, I realize that it may take him a bit to extricate himself so I make my way back downstairs alone, heading straight to the comfort of the graphic novels and anime books. 

I scan the shelves and pull a few books out and then sit down on the floor. This isn’t going the way I planned. Although, what did I think was going to happen? If we retraced our steps, he would remember? 

Well. Yeah. I guess that’s what I was hoping for. 

I open one of the books and force myself to concentrate on the words and art, trying to drive out my obsessive thoughts. 

“You’re still here! I thought maybe you had left.”

“Of course not,” I answer, faking what I hope is a convincing smile as he plops down on the floor next to me. I can’t help but notice when he glances around first to see if he recognizes anyone else. 

“Who was that?” I finally ask after an awkward silence.

“She’s in my afternoon literature class.”

“Did she recognize me?”

“No, I think we’re ok. She didn’t seem to notice that we were together.”

We were together. I can’t help but think how good those words sound. If only they were true. Right now they’re just a reminder that we’re nowhere near together, at least the way I want us to be together. 

“Well, I guess we should probably go,” I say, staring down at the colorful carpet, tracing the pattern with my finger. 

“Oh,” he answers, looking disappointed. “But I still don’t understand why we came here.”

Neither do I.

“It was a long shot idea anyway. It doesn’t matter.” I glance up and catch him blatantly staring at me. But unlike someone who gets caught doing something they shouldn’t, he doesn’t look away and make up some sort of excuse. In fact, if anything, his stare becomes more intense and I can’t drag my eyes away from his even if for some unfathomable reason I actually wanted to. 

“What happened a year ago, Dan?” he murmurs. “The note with your name and address on it was dated exactly a year to the day before I found it. Did we know each other?”

My heart pounds.

Suddenly, I feel his fingers on the back of my hand. I want to look down to see us touching, just to confirm it’s true, but his pale blue eyes have me held captive. His traces small circles on my skin and I can feel it warm to his touch. His fingers work their way down to mine and for a brief but beautiful moment, I think that he may try to hold my hand, but instead his hand brushes against the book I’m still holding.

Before I can react, Phil takes the book out of my hand and his eyes flicker away from mine. He stares at the Tokyo Ghoul cover intently.

“The book,” he says quietly. “Our book. Are you going to tell me how that envelope ended up in the copy of this book that’s in my office? You said you knew how it got there….”

The hopeful look on his face slices right through my heart. What are my options? Do I tell him that he was dead and I put that paper with my name and address on it so he could find me if our plan worked and he came back to me? There’s no way I can word the truth in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a lunatic. That would be the end of our friendship, or whatever it is you want to call what’s going on right now, and I’ll lose any chance of getting him to remember on his own. He’s already getting so close, and it’s a risk that’s too big to take.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t right now, but I hope that someday I’ll be able to tell you.”

“It sounds like it must be quite a story,” he says sadly as he stands back up and returns the book to the shelf.

“It is,” I manage to choke out, turning my head so he can’t see the tears building in my eyes.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late, short, and sweet. The next chapter is almost done, so stay tuned :)

Phil POV

 

I’m staring at my ceiling. Again. It seems that’s how I’m going to be spending all of my nights for the foreseeable future. I flip my pillow over to the cool side and kick at my blankets until they’re a tangled, wadded up mess. Frustrated, I give them one final shove with my foot and they land on the floor. 

It’s been weeks, no, months, since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. I pull myself together every morning and bring a thermos of coffee big enough to last me through all of my classes and office hours. Eventually, the caffeine loosens its grip on me and pure exhaustion takes over long enough for me to catch a furtive nap on the couch when I get home. I want to think that I’m successfully hiding the fact that I’m running on coffee and 4 hours of sleep a day. 

I hear a small chime from my phone and I grab it so quickly it almost tumbles to the ground. There’s only one person who it could be at this time of night.

Dan: I beat your Mario Kart score.

I couldn’t help but smile. I know he meant for me to read that first thing in the morning so I would wonder all day if he was telling the truth or not. Mario Kart scores are nothing to joke around about. 

Phil: Lies!

Dan: Hey! I didn’t think you’d still be awake

I glance at the time. Almost 2 am. I did some quick math and figure that even if I fell asleep right now, I’d still only get 4 hours of sleep since my alarm goes off at 6 am. 

Phil: Yeah. The insomnia is still pretty bad.

I put the phone down for a second and rub my eyes with my fists, as if that would clear all of the thoughts swirling around in my head. 

Dan: Did you ever figure out what’s causing it?

You. 

Phil: No.

The lie gets a bit harder to say every time he asks.

Dan: Try to get some sleep. We can talk tomorrow. 

I hesitate before I start typing.

Phil: Good night, Dan.

Three months of no sleep. Three very long months. Of course, the entire situation was completely avoidable had I thought things through or had any amount of willpower. I can even pin down the exact date I had a full night’s rest.

I had been so nervous that day three months ago when Dan showed up on my doorstep and took me to the bookstore. It was sort of risky for a teacher to be seen socializing with a student so I knew it was a liability, except that wasn’t the reason for the butterflies in my stomach. It wasn’t the fact I was going somewhere with a student, it was because that student was Dan. And Dan was worth the risk. Even the risk of losing my job.

After that night, common sense and school rules went out the window. That small bit of Dan’s friendship had me hooked. There was no turning back.

Except it wasn’t just friendship. It took me a long time to come to terms with that. I was fooling myself if I thought for one second that my interest in Dan was just friendship. That strange pull I felt towards him on the first day of class only became magnified with each text, long phone conversation, or an excursion out in the world together. 

He looked so disappointed when we left the bookstore that day. I never did figure out what it was he was trying to get me to remember. I shared his frustration because I so wanted to know why that slip of paper with his name and address on it was tucked into that forgotten book on my shelf. It had to be connected to what Dan was so eager for me to remember. I couldn’t make the connection, and he seemed unwilling to tell me, leaving me to obsess over the possibilities and why it was so vital to him that I remember on my own.

Despite the risk, I went back to his dorm room with him that night. I couldn’t leave him like that, looking so sad and knowing that I was the cause of it. We ordered pizza, played video games, and watched movies well into the night. I wondered if I was overstaying my welcome, but he never made any indication he wanted me to leave and I certainly wasn’t going to suggest it. 

Dan fell asleep that night, curled up with his head on his pillow, oblivious to both me and the movie that continued playing. I knew that I should have left. It was late enough that I wouldn’t have any problems slipping out of the dorms unnoticed. That was the sensible thing to do. But I couldn’t. The rise and fall of his breaths and the way his curls were wild and tangled had me transfixed. So instead of leaving, I ever so carefully eased myself down and laid next to him. He stirred a little bit and mumbled something in his sleep before he quickly became still again. 

My head was on the pillow next to his now. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch his hand that was lying between us on the bed. But I couldn’t. That was a line I couldn’t cross. But to my surprise, he shuffled around and flung his arm over me and around my waist, snuggling his head into my shoulder.

Again, I should have left. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not with him pressed up against me like that. Instead, I closed my eyes for just few minutes. Five minutes, I had convinced myself. Five minutes and I would slip out of his bed and go home. But five minutes passed, and I had fallen asleep with Dan wrapped around me. 

When I woke again, the sun was streaming into the room. A quick glance at the clock sent me into a panic when I realized it was 7 am. I somehow managed to untangle myself from Dan’s arms and legs without waking him before slipping silently out of the door and down the back stairway of the dorms. I probably should have learned something from that experience, but it just seemed to propel me into even murkier waters. 

That night runs through my mind on a continuous loop in the evenings when I’m here alone. I try to clear my head and grab around on the floor until I find my blankets and pull them back over me. Thankfully, sleep is starting to creep up on me. I hesitate, but then against better judgment pick up my phone again and pull up our texts. I scroll back through them, just catching a snippet of conversation here and there. Three months of texts. Hundreds of them. 

Even if I can’t tell anyone else the truth, I know I can’t lie to myself anymore. 

I love him. 

The thought releases a wave of panic through me, but I don’t care. It’s the truth. When you’ve been living a lie for three months, the truth feels exhilarating. 

But is it even possible to be in love with someone when the relationship is still platonic on one side? Dan has been such a good friend, but I let it go past that and crossed a line by allowing my feelings get away from me. The thought of ever telling him the truth makes me feel sick. I could never handle the look of disappointment and betrayal that would cross his face. It’s better to suffer in silence than to ever hurt him. 

So now what? I can’t keep pretending. There have been so many times that I wanted to instinctively hold his hand or run my fingers through his brunette curls. At some point, I’m going to slip and do something horrible, but I don’t know how to stop this. I can’t reverse time and take it all back, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to. This has been going on for months. Every day gets harder and harder, and something has to give. The question is what.

I put my phone down and yawn, tugging the blankets until they are straight. Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means Dan is in my first class. It’s just a little thing, but such a comfort knowing that whenever I see him, all of this goes away. The stress and pain all go away. Even if it’s just for an hour and a half, the only thing in my heart and head is Dan.


	17. Chapter 17

Dan POV

Wednesdays are my favorite days by far because we’ve gotten in the habit of going back to Phil’s office after his last class. It started out with him helping and offering advice on papers, which I guess I technically didn’t even need, but I couldn’t turn down spending time with him no matter the reason. Eventually, we gave up pretending that these visits had anything to do with school and just spent the time talking. 

I’ve never had a friend as close as Phil before, not even growing up. Friend. It still stings a bit even to say that word. I’m more and more resigned to our ‘just friends’ status with each day that passes, but the more time we spend together and the more memories we create, I know I’ll never have any closure. There will always be a huge part of me that will always wonder what could have been. 

I’ve tried everything I possibly can to get him to remember what was between us before, but the options have all run out. The only thing I have left is to hope he falls in love with me on his own, without the memories. The odds of that are slim considering he is my teacher, but I refuse to let go of that one last thread of hope. 

My heart starts to sink when I realize the office has taken on a goldish hue, the color that comes with the sunset. I know it’s time to leave. 

“Well, I guess I better get going,” I say reluctantly. Phil glances behind him at the dying light through the window and nods.

“Yeah, I suppose we should.” 

Does he sound disappointed? Or am I just imagining it because of how badly I want him to insist that we stay a little bit longer?

I pick up my backpack and shuffle slowly to the door. Out of habit, I always leave a few minutes before Phil does, just in case someone spots us so it doesn’t look suspicious. 

“Oh, wait!”

I stop abruptly at the sound of Phil’s voice and turn around, hopeful.

“I wanted to give you something. I was going through my things and found a book that I think you would love!”

I smile to myself as I slowly walk back over and stand next to his desk as he digs through boxes with his back towards me. After watching him struggle for a few minutes, I take another step closer to see if maybe I can help.

“Phil, do you…”

“Here it is!” Phil exclaims happily as he turns around and runs right into me, abruptly cutting off my offer for help. 

But he doesn’t move. And neither do I. We’d never been this close before, well, at least not quite like this. Maybe a few times while sitting next to each other on my bed watching a movie, but never face to face. My eyes are locked onto his, afraid to let them wander away even for a second. His, on the other hand, freely roam over my face, causing time to come to a crashing halt. Finally, he blinks slowly, letting his blue eyes flicker down to my mouth and stay there. 

I hold my breath, heart pounding wildly in my chest. Should I kiss him? What if this is my only chance? But before I can decide, he ever so slowly, starts to lean in towards me. My eyes close, waiting to feel his lips touch mine.

A loud crash breaks the spell and my eyes pop back open, only to find Phil backed against his desk with a pile of books laying on the floor. The look of horror on his face says it all and both my stomach and hopes plummet to the ground.

“Dan, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

There is a buzzing in my ears so loud I can hardly hear him. I grasp onto the back of the chair to keep myself upright. 

“I hope you can forgive me. I shouldn’t have…”

His voice is coming from behind me now, somewhere near the door. I steady myself and turn around, but the look on his face is still the same.

“It’s ok,” I urge, holding my hands out in front of me, hoping to calm him down. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Phil!”

“I did! I’m your teacher!”

“But I wanted you to kiss me! I have for a long time!” I blurt out. 

We both freeze, staring at each other in shock, waiting for someone to break the silence. I try to read the emotions flashing across his face. To my relief, anger doesn’t seem to be one of them. 

“Y-you want…” he says, stumbling through the words, taking a tentative step towards me.

“Yes! I tried so hard not to be obvious, Phil. I was scared if you knew I had feelings for you, you would be upset and never want to see me again.” 

“Dan,” he says, his expression softening. “The last thing I would be is upset.”

“Did you…did you really want to kiss me? You’ve thought of that before?” I feel like I’m walking on thin ice and am terrified to speak.

Phil hesitates and then nods his head silently. 

“Do you still want to kiss me?”

“Yes.” 

That is all I needed to hear, and without hesitation, I quickly close the distance between us. Phil’s hands are immediately on me, cradling my face while he looks at me intently. I wait, holding my breath, wanting him to be sure and knowing that he needs to be the one to decide to do this.

“I can’t,” he murmurs as he slips his hands away. “You have no idea how badly I want this, but I just can’t do this to you.”

“Phil,” I answer. “You aren’t taking advantage of me. I want this too!”

“I’m your teacher, Dan. What I want doesn’t matter. I’m so so sorry.”

And just like that, he slips out of the door and is gone. I’m speechless and frozen into place by disbelief, listening to his footsteps get softer as he gets further away until they too are gone. Disappointment floods my body and I slide down the doorframe until I’m sitting on the ground.

Did this actually just happen? 

***

Left alone in his office, I wait for what seems like a lifetime, thinking that surely he would be back. When I finally do go, I sprint back to the dorm, confident that he will be waiting outside for me. We’ll talk things out and everything will be fine. I mean, I now know that we both want the same thing! 

But he isn’t there. I loiter around outside for a bit before finally giving up and going up to my room. 

Somehow I’ve managed to resist texting him after he ran out of his office. Maybe he just needs some time to think about what to do next and I don’t want to push him and scare him away. It won’t be easy since I’m his student, but we can work around that. I can drop out of the class or we can keep things quiet until the semester is over. 

I turn off the light and settle down in my bed. I try, I really do. Each night as I lay here, searching for sleep, I let my mind drift back. I know I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s so unhealthy, but I can’t help it. Yet I continue to do it, reliving each word and every touch. Everything always comes back to him.

But tonight, the stakes are a little bit higher. He has feelings for me. I pick up my phone in the dark and open up the text thread with Phil. Does he ever do this? Lay awake at night, rehashing every text we’ve ever sent? Like every other night, I play each conversation we’ve ever had over and over in my head like a broken record. At first, I did it because I was looking for some sort of answer. I analyzed every word, searching for that missing key that would make him remember. We knew we were taking a significant risk with him leaving and that in the end, it might not pay off. I refused to believe that was a possibility and tonight we finally came so close!

And up until tonight, all I had were daydreams about what could have been. At least Phil had an actual memory about what it would be like for us to be together: the memory of us kissing. He got the feelings, emotion, and love that went along with kissing the person you were meant to be with. His words would stick with me for the rest of my life: 

_“It’s not a real memory, it only felt like one. Kissing you wasn’t something in the past, it’s something that could happen in the future. A premonition, not a memory.”_

It’s these words from our first week together that carry me off to a fitful and troubled sleep each night, and despite what happened today, tonight seems to be no different. But as the silence envelopes me, something shoots through my body. I jolt up, throwing my covers aside and gasping for breath. Understanding washes over me and suddenly it all comes together.

How could I be so stupid? It wasn’t enough for us to fall in love with each other again. I have to make the premonition come true for him to remember. 

The way back to each other was there all along. It’s the kiss.

If we kiss, he’ll remember.


	18. Chapter 18

Phil POV

“He was going to kiss me back,” I mumble to myself as I pace around my apartment. “I’d been thinking about nothing else for months and it finally happens and I run away. Oh my god, Phil, you are so stupid!”

I mean, it’s just one kiss right? There’s nothing wrong with that, except that you are his teacher and kissing your students is the very definition of wrong. 

But what if it’s only one? That’s not too bad. You’re not a bad person for wanting this. It would be just one kiss to see what it would feel like. Maybe it would be horrible and you’d never want to do it again. Problem solved.

I actually snort laugh out loud at that one. Who am I fooling? There’s no way the kiss could be anything other than fantastic. 

“What are you going to do, Phil….” I ask myself, talking out loud again. I continue my pacing, running my hands through my hair and tugging on it, as if that would help me come up with a solution.

I stop suddenly when I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. I pull it out and glance at the time. 2 am. That can’t be anyone but Dan. I cram it back into my pocket where it immediately buzzes again. I can’t talk to him. I have to think this through rationally and that’s not going to happen if I’m thinking about kissing him. Or pretty much anything else having to do with him. 

Whatever this is between us has to stop. I need to get a hold of my emotions and be an adult about this. My teaching career just started and I’m considering just throwing it all away, because that is exactly what I’d be doing if Dan and I had a relationship. Even if he wasn’t in my class, it wouldn’t matter. There is no way they would let me keep my job if I was dating a student. 

Plus, there’s no guarantees. What if what Dan is feeling is just a crush? I mean, students get crushes on their teachers all of the time, right? It’s a common thing. He may hurt for a while, but he’ll forget all about me and be fine. This is what’s better for everyone. 

My stomach lurches at the thought of him forgetting me. It’s possible that Dan just has a crush, but by now I know my feelings have grown far beyond that. There is this undeniable pull towards him. I’ve already taken so many risks, but I don’t care. I don’t regret one single minute I’ve spent with him. 

I jump and start to panic as my phone buzzes again. If I see him or even look at those texts, I’m going to be absolutely sunk. There’s no way I’ll be able to walk away.

Is that what I’m doing? Walking away? I don’t think I have a choice. If I can just get away for a while and get my head on straight, everything will be fine. I’ll tell work I have a family emergency and take some time to be alone. Before I lose my nerve, I grab a small suitcase and a backpack and start throwing in clothes. My phone vibrates again but ignore it and try to focus on what I’m doing. I have no idea where I’m going, but I guess the place really doesn’t matter that much. Maybe someplace quiet by the water where I can clear my head. 

Someplace where there is no Dan.

*****

I’m sitting in the car in front of my apartment having a debate with myself. I can’t just go without saying something to Dan first, right? It would be so much easier to just leave, but I can’t stand the thought of him worrying about me. Maybe I should just read his texts first and then decide. 

I take a deep breath and then reach in my pocket to pull out my phone.

Dan: Phil? Are you still awake?

Dan: I know it’s late, but I need to talk to you.

Dan: I’m so sorry for my part in this. I never should have told you how I really felt.

Dan: Ok. I take that back. I’m not sorry for feeling this way. 

Dan: I know you’re probably freaked out and a little confused right now and I don’t blame you. Please don’t do anything rash. I promise you we can get through this. 

Dan: I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life. I know you can feel the pull that is between us. Even if you leave, that feeling will still be there. 

Dan: There are so many things I want to explain to you, but I’m too scared. If I tell you these things, you’ll think I’ve lost my mind. I’ve come too close to just throw it all away.

I frown and reread the last text, not understanding. What could he possibly say to me that would tear him apart like this? 

Dan: I know you’re upset right now, and I completely understand, but I need to know you aren’t just going to leave. I can skip class and stop texting you if that’s what it takes, but please just don’t leave. 

Dan: I’m starting to get scared now, Phil. And I’m not going to be able to stop sending these texts until I at least know you’re ok and still here. 

While I’m still torn about what I should do next, my phone buzzes one final time. My breath catches as I read his text.

Dan: I need to tell you how the piece of paper with my name on it got into the book in your office. 

I glance into the back seat at my suitcase and backpack. I frantically reach back and yank the backpack up front, unzipping it and feeling around blindly inside until I feel what I’m looking for. 

I pull the envelope out of the book and open it, just as I’ve done at least a hundred times since I first found it. The paper easily slips out and I run my fingers over the hastily printed words:

Dan Howell  
room 315  
Brauer Hall Dormitory

How many nights have I lost sleep because of this piece of paper? I’ve thought through so many different scenarios, but none of them quite made sense. There is no reasonable explanation. 

But apparently I was wrong and there is an explanation, one that I somehow overlooked. One that only Dan knows.

My head has been so full of thoughts and noise all night that I can barely think. I finally close my eyes, lean back in the seat, and stop trying to resist. There’s only one way I’m going to be able to think clearly and decide what to do.

I concentrate on Dan and what he might be doing right now. The details of his dorm room come into focus, which isn’t a surprise. There’s nowhere else he would be at this time of night. He’s sitting on his bed holding his phone, wearing a plain black tshirt and blue and black plaid pajama pants. The sad look on his face tugs at my heart, knowing I’m the one who’s causing his pain. 

I imagine that he’s just as conflicted as I am. He’s tired, but trying to stay awake, like he’s waiting for something. Or someone. He reaches over to his nightstand and takes the last few drinks out of a can of soda. My heart contracts in my chest when I see that he’s been crying.

As it usually is when I do this, the pull I feel to him is too strong. Any hope I had of quietly leaving town without him knowing are forgotten. I have to get to him.

I guess I never questioned why this works. Imagining Dan and what’s going on around him has such a calming effect on me. I always wonder if the visions in my head are ever remotely close to what he is actually doing.


	19. Chapter 19

Dan sets the empty soda can down on his nightstand and flops back on the bed. "Is he even getting my texts?" he wonders idly. He could be sleeping, but I doubt it, not after what happened tonight. 

He stares at the last message he sent and wonders if it was the right thing to do. He knows he has to play his cards very carefully. If Phil is still awake and has gotten all of the texts he sent, surely the last one will get his attention. 

“Come on, Phil,” he says to the empty room. “Where are you?”

Guilt plagues him for wanting Phil this badly. He knows that wishing Phil would throw away years of school and his teaching career just to be with him is the actual definition of selfish, but if he’s honest with himself, he just doesn’t care at this point.

He hates this. He hates that there’s nothing left to do bit sit and wait, which is something he’s always been horrible at. Being forced to sit around when your life is entirely out of your control and in the hands of someone else has to be the worst feeling in the world. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on something else. Each time he tries, his attention is yanked back to the sick feeling that’s in the pit of his stomach. He pulls open the drawer in his nightstand and clumsily gropes around for his earpods. As soon as they’re in his ears, he pulls up a playlist, turns the volume up as loud as he can stand it, and closes his eyes. The songs don’t matter. Nothing matters, not even the hot tears spilling down his cheeks.

Dan tries as hard as he can to think of anything but Phil. School. Books. Movies. But each time his attention turns back to Phil and his heart clenches. He does this over and over until he has no idea how he’s going to stay sane.

\---

Phil slowly twists the doorknob and pushes it open, peeking into the room. It’s mostly dark except for the small lamp next to Dan’s bed. When he spots Dan’s body sprawled out on the bed, Phil assumes he’s already asleep, but quickly realizes that’s far from the truth when his body shudders as he takes a big gasping breath and swipes at his tears. Phil slowly takes a few steps into the room and closes the door silently behind him. Unsure of what to do, he stands there, unable to take his eyes off of Dan. 

After a few minutes, his pulse quickens as he takes in the scene around him. Everything is just as it was when he was sitting in his living room, trying to envision what Dan was doing at that very moment. The black t-shirt, blue and black plaid pajama bottoms, the soda can on the nightstand, the phone he once held now lying next to him on the bed. Everything he saw in his head was real, and now here he is, standing in the middle of it. 

The realization hits him that whatever is going on here, the visions, the weird unexplained pull towards Dan, is more significant than anything he’s equipped to understand. But what does it mean? The only thing he finally knows for sure is that right now, as he watches Dan start to stir, the feeling of familiarity fills him and reminds him that he’s exactly where he needs to be. 

“Phil?” Dan rasps, turning off his music and sitting up

“Yeah…I’m here,” Phil answers softly. 

“You didn’t answer your texts. I thought maybe you left.”

“That was my plan.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

“Because I saw you, Dan. And not just that, it’s like I could feel how sad you were too.”

Dan’s heart speeds up as he remembers the ghost version of Phil explaining how he could see and feel everything Dan felt whenever they touched. But Phil is alive now. How can that still be happening?

“What do you mean?” Dan asks, hoping and praying for the answer he wants to hear.

Phil looks down at his feet and takes a deep breath before his eyes can meet Dan’s again.

“This,” he answers, gesturing around the room. “All of this. You, what you’re wearing, what you were doing. Everything. Why could I see this, Dan? Do you know why this is happening?” His voice cracks at the end as he fights back the tears.

Dan sits up in bed with a renewed sense of hope and takes stock of the confused man standing in the middle of his dorm room, looking like he just stumbled out of bed, hair rumpled and clothes a wrinkled mess. The circles under his eyes are so dark it suggests he hasn’t slept well in weeks. The memories are there. He has to make him remember. 

“Dan?” Phil questions.

“I can’t see you in my head the way you can see me,” Dan finally answers.

“Why?” 

“We have a…connection with each other. I mean, surely you’ve felt that in ways other than being able to see me in your head.”

“Yes, of course, but that’s just because of how close we’ve gotten. Dan, you’re my best friend! And, well, I guess we both know that it’s turned into a bit more than that.” He watches as Dan pulls his eyes away from his and starts to look around the room nervously. 

“It’s not just that. There’s more to this isn’t there?” Phil asks.

Dan pauses and then nods.

“Then help me understand, Dan!” he says as he closes the distance between them with two quick steps before grabbing both of Dan’s hands in his.

Dan startles at the movement. He tries to think of the best way to explain, but he’s drowning Phil’s closeness. Everything about Phil his pulling him under, those crystal blue eyes, perfect pale skin, the way his long fingers are wrapped around his hands. 

The silence stretches and Phil’s eyes are still questioning as he waits for Dan to say something. 

“We knew each other. Last year. Before I was in your class,” Dan finally blurts out. 

“That’s impossible.”

“Believe me, I know it seems that way, but it’s true.” Dan pauses and waits for what he’s telling Phil to soak in.

“The first time we talked, I was furious at you.”

“You were?” Phil asks, suddenly curious. “Why?”

“Well, that was the first time we spoke, but it wasn’t the first time I saw you. The first time was in the elevator. I thought you were cute but creepy because you kept staring at me.”

“You thought I was cute?” Phil asks, with a small smile. “Why don’t I remember this?”

“And then you followed me to a date I had at a coffee shop and watched me the entire time.”

“Oh god,” Phil moans. “I don’t remember doing that, but I’m so awkward it sounds like something I would do.”

“And then the next day, you were standing outside of one of my classes and then started following me back to my dorm. That was the first time we spoke. I started yelling at you to leave me alone.”

“Why can’t I remember any of this?” Phil asks as he sits down on the bed, looking slightly stunned. “What happened next?”

“You came back to my room and we talked. And then I got mad at you again and you left,” Dan explains as he sits next to Phil. 

They sit in silence across from each other while Phil tries to make sense of what Dan is telling him.

“Phil? Look at me.”

Phil glances up and rearranges himself on the bed so he’s facing Dan. 

“Do you trust me? Will you try something?”

Phil nods, and Dan hesitantly reaches up and covers Phil’s eyes with his hand.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“Please just try…for me. Please?”

Phil nods and leans into Dan’s hand.

“Tell me what happened next,” Dan urges. “After I got mad.”

“How can I? I..I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of this!”

“Concentrate. You know how you can see me in your head sometimes and sense how I’m feeling? Focus on what I’m saying and try to do that again. It’s ok if you can’t, but please try.”

Phil takes a big breath and then stills. 

“You were in my room, just like you are now,” Dan starts. “I was scared, and you were trying to calm me down. You were telling me things, things I didn’t understand. I got angry at you and told you to leave. Do you remember what you were telling me, Phil?”

He stares at him intently, waiting. Time ticks by so slowly, Dan would swear that it actually stops. After what seems like an eternity, he opens his mouth to continue, but that’s when Phil’s voice fills the room.

“After I left, I missed you. I was confused,” Phil says softly. 

Dan is glad Phil can’t see him right now because he can’t hide the emotion washing over his face. Phil remembers. But how much?

“I missed you too, Phil. I wanted you to come back. I was scared that I would never see you again.” 

“I waited for you the next day but was worried you would get mad again when you saw me. We sat underneath the trees and talked before we went back to your room. We talked some more until you fell asleep and then I stayed here with you,” he says fondly. “You seemed really happy. Actually, we both did.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“We went to the bookstore,” he answers, frowning. “But we just did that last week.”

“What you’re seeing is the first time we went together,” Dan says softly.

“We’re looking at books together. You’re holding them open for me, but I don’t understand why. Wait…is this what you wanted me to remember when you took me to the bookstore the second time? That we had been there together before?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“No, I guess not.”

“I needed you to remember on your own, Phil. I know this is hard, but there’s just a little bit more. Please keep going if you can.”

“Dan, it’s fuzzy. I can’t quite see everything.”

“That’s ok,” Dan answers, trying to sound calm. “You’re doing so well, Phil.”

“We’re here again in your room. We’re both upset, but it’s different than when you were mad at me before. Are we saying good-bye to each other? We don’t want to, but we have to for some reason. You’re looking around trying to find something now. And you’re at the desk writing something,” he says, the words spilling out faster and faster.

“And then what?”

“You’re putting the piece of paper in a book and handing it to me….”

There are a few seconds of silence before Phil shoves Dan’s hand away, his eyes wide with panic.

“It’s ok, you’re ok,” Dan says, scooting closer, trying to soothe him. Instead of covering his eyes again, he grasps Phil’s hands and looks into his eyes. “Concentrate on me again, ok? 

“But Dan, that’s how the paper with your address got into my book, isn’t it?”

Dan nods nervously.

“I can’t remember any of this happening, but obviously it did!”

“Phil, please try again! This will all make sense soon, I promise. We’re so close!”

“Close to what? I don’t want to do this anymore!” Phil shouts. “Why can’t you just tell me what is going on?” 

“Can you tell what I was feeling?” Dan asks, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

“You were scared. And sad,” Phil says, the words quivering. You were sad because I was leaving for a long time, but I don’t understand. Why would I leave you? What could have possibly happened that would make me walk away from you?

“What else did I feel?” he pleads, ignoring Phil’s question.

Phil takes a deep, frustrated breath and closes his eyes again. Dan waits, staring at him intently until once again, Phil finally opens his eyes wide, tears slowly falling down his cheeks.

“Love. We loved each other so much, Dan.”

Without hesitation, Phil closes what little distance there is between them, and before Dan even realizes what’s happening, he feels Phil’s lips gently pressing against his own.


End file.
